Research shows again and again that the British, whether by pressure of the violent Arabs or due to its own biased tendency, (come to think of it, in retrospect, maybe, if Jews wouldn’t be so kind and tolerant, if they’d behave like the racist Arabs and be so intolerant of Arab immigrants as the Arabs were so adamantly oppose to the Jews, the outcome might have been different and a myth of “native Palestinians” would have been avoided) willfully ignored huge Arab immigration (docuemnted also by ‘totally objective’ authors such as Ladislas Farago in “A Palestinian Kaleidoscope, Palestine on the Eve” in the 1930s) and spinned, suppressed information and any protest about that, while putting heavy restriction on Jewish immigration exculsively. Yet, since there’s no official recorded data because of that destructive British policy, we are unable to obtain exact numbers (as the British have admitted), thus, we can only ascertain that –with no control on Arab immigration and so many coming evading British control– the crowds were huge, as Roosevelt [criticizing British ‘white paper’ policy] pointed out that Arab immigration in the 1920s far exceeded that of the Jews‘.

Description of Palestine/Israel in the 1700s, 1800s is of desolate, waste land.With today’s technology – ability to dig up old documents from contemporary era, we see again and again confirmation that the notion of a largely ’empty land,’ was/is not a myth after all.

Though not completely empty in the 1800s, it was vacant for the most part. On the other hand, [Some] Jewish presence never stopped in the Holy land.

Only with Jewish rise in immigration, the status gradually improved and it also encouraged Arab immigration beginning in the late 1800s and intensified in the early 1900s.

(The pseudo “argument” anti-Israel propagandists use, is basically comprised of an exaggeration tactic intended to discredit anyone daring to “touch” the assuming myth of “all-indigenous,” and bringing up true history. They often wave some record showing some ‘life’ at the time of the noted ‘land without a people,’ as if this statement ever meant to say: 100% empty, thus their idiotic line is essentially like this: hey, there were people there, OK? it was not empty land, so you are “wrong,” it’s a “myth,” end of story. Yet, they always fail to show that the majority of Palestine was in fact “populated.” All the while, records rather show concretely exactly the opposite.)

There were many Egyptian Arab immigrants (especially due to those fleeing Ibrahim Pasha) when the first ever census was conducted in 1844, still, that census showed Jews make up the majority in Jerusalem and the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1891 puts Safed – the principle city of the U. Galilee as of predominantly Jewish inhabitants and traditionally so [indeed there were pogroms by Muslims in Safed in 1834/1838], while most Muslims in that region do not seem to be ‘Arab.’ The city of Hebron was always Jewish.

Conclusion

Since there have been large waves of immigration “joining” the small group of Muslims [already in Palestine, who either came recently before them or –at least– came/settled many years after most of the Jews left], no one can utterly state that the majority of Arab “Palestinians” are in any way “natives.”

Moreover, the argument that most (if not almost all) of them entail just one, two, or at least no more than a mere few generations in the land, is more historically logic, as the population has been replaced so many times over.

No less marked is the progress made of late years in and about Jaffa, … North and south of the town is quite a series of suburbs, substantially built by Arab immigrants from Upper Egypt, who are settling in Syria and Palestine.

NAPOLEON TO ALLENBY: PROCESSES OF CHANGE IN PALESTINE, 1800-1918 Ruth Kark PERIODIZATION is used as a tool in historical… the impact of the West and Westernization, the Judeo-Palestino-Centric and later Zionist angles, or more recently the Arab-Palestino-Centric angles… In each, we may create periodizations for sub-categories of political events (eg wars, regime change), certain populations, or waves of immigration and settlement (the.. Aliyah (immigration wave) of the Jews for example in 1777, the Aliyah from North Africa in 1830, or the Lovers of Zion Aliyah in 1882 unjustifiably entitled “The First Aliyah”, and the same for Arab or other sub-groups such as the wave of immigration from Egypt in the 1820s and 1830s,…http://books.google.com/books?id=c-cviX0c63YC&pg=PA13

p. 17

The pogroms in Russia in 1881 opened a new period for Jews in Palestine. The mass exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe resulted in the immigration of some 25000 to Palestine over the following two decades… Arab Muslim immigration to Palestine continued mainly from adjoining countries – Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Transjordan – in pursuit of economic opportunity.

World War I had taken a heavy toll of Palestine and its Arab population, leaving it damaged and impoverished. The population was reduced by a quarter through emigration; thousands had died from war and starvation.

The Hauranis in the orange plantations of Palestine and Egyptians and Sudanese in the ports of Haifa and Jaffa are on a level with the Chinese coolies on the islands of the Malay Archipelago and the South Seas. The migration of these Arabs into Palestine has been stimulated, in the case of Trans- Jordan, by the oppressive Turkish system of land taxation which remained in force until 1933. Under this system, according to the Report of the Palestine and Trans-Jordan Governments for 1935… … http://books.google.com/books?id=7y0xAAAAIAAJ&q=%22migration+of+these+Arabs+into+Palestine%22

…Syria), Trans jordania, and Egypt. These come to Palestine where they find work, receive a much higher wage scale, shorter hours of work, and better living conditions. This is a constant mass phenomenon in Palestine. The Arab press in Syria reports that 25000 or more fellahin and workers migrated out of Syria to Palestine in the course of one year in order to seek work. And we do not see masses of Arab workers and fellahin leaving Palestine or being attracted by the conditions.. http://books.google.com/books?id=-DO7AAAAIAAJ&q=25000(“Jews and Arabs in Palestine: studies in a national and colonial problem,” Enzo Sereni, R. E. Ashery, 1976, 416 pages, p. 81http://books.google.com/books?&id=GZ5tAAAAMAAJ&dq=fellahin)

From the approximately 1800 dunams of orange plantations the villagers may expect much more income than they ever … ARAB IMMIGRATION INTO PALESTINE The Jewish colonies employing Arab labor have recently been invaded by Arabs coming from Hauran, a part of French-mandated Syria, from El Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, and from other near-by regions. http://books.google.com/books?&id=1a0cAAAAMAAJ&dq=hauran

A Palestinian Kaleidoscope, ” Palestine on the Eve.” By Ladislas Farago. Two maps. Sixty-three illustrations. Putnam. los. 6d.Fairness and balance are maintained by the author in his descriptive book of Palestine as he found it during the Arab “strike” last summer. Mr. Farago reached Palestine last June via Beirut. He writes a journalistic and colourful account of conditions and opinions as he found and heard them, and in a short visit probably obtained a clearer perspective than a longer acquaintance would provide. Though a shrewd observer, he avoids political conclusions and offers no solution to the problem now confronting the British Government. But his book should certainly be read by anyone who wishes to understand the tactical issue, which has been created by British policy in Palestine. Arriving from the north, at the frontier the author found Palestine labelled significantly in English, Arabic and Hebrew, indicating at once the three influences he was about to encounter… Their orange plantations are just as fine as the Jewish, but from their grain fields they are content with a small surplus over domestic requirements and, owing to their laws of inheritance, they do not care to invest in land… …and the Arab labour is still exclusively employed by the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA), while the Yemenite Jews employ Haurani Arabs in their gardens. Illegal immigrants from every Arab country infiltrate into Palestine. These mainly find their way to Jaffa, as dock workers, to prosper on the transit requirements of Tel Aviv; nor are the Arabs averse to turning an honest penny in smuggling Jews into Palestine, agencies having been established in Beirut for this purpose. The author quotes official figures of 60,000 illegal Arab immigrants as against 40,000 Jewish. http://books.google.com/books?id=i4dCAAAAYAAJ&q=obtained+a+clearerhttp://books.google.com/books?id=i4dCAAAAYAAJ&q=infiltrate

“Yet, once you have achieved your complete independence, you Jews will go ahead so fast that you will outstrip the Arabs. […] With increasing prosperity the Arabs will be just as anxious as we are to keep out these thousands of… Hauranis who only tend to lower the standard of living. I don’t mean that all Arab immigration will be cancelled, not by any means, but they will be able to pick and choose what sort of people they will allow into their thriving communities. The whole standard of their people will rise… http://books.google.com/books?id=fyy7AAAAIAAJ&dq=prosperityhttp://books.google.com/books?&id=fyy7AAAAIAAJ&dq=rise

EXTENSION OF REMARKS Of HON. JOHN W. McCORMACKOFMASSACHUSETTS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, July 6, 1939

Mr. McCORMACK. Mr. Speaker, “the association of the Jewish people with Palestine dates back over 4000 years. During all that time Jews have resided almost continuously in Palestine, having established Jewish commonwealths at two different periods.The second Jewish commonwealth was destroyed by the Romans under Titus in the year AD 70.[…] …ward to is that at the end of 5 years all Jewish immigration will be stopped,… When the Balfour declaration was issued, it was not intended to establish another ghetto in Palestine. The Jewish population of Palestine has grown from 55000 in 1918 to its present figure of 450000. The Arab population has risen from 400000 in 1920 to about 950000, an increase of over 50 percent in 17 years. Under Turkish rule the population was almost stationary. From all this it follows that since the Jewish population will not be allowed to increase by more than 75000, and since there will be no restriction placed upon Arab immigration, the Jewish National Home will soon be swamped by the surrounding non- Jewish population, and Jews will properly feel that they have been led into a trap by promises that they would be able to build up a commonwealth… This new plan to arbitrarily limit immigration will slow up the development of the country. With the increase of population in Palestine there has been a corresponding increase of wealth and new and increased possibilities for more…

The government at that time rejected this report, and time has shown that this rejection was correct, as 150000 Jews and an equal number of Arabs have entered the country since that time, and there are still large stretches of vacant land in the country capable of development and settlement by large population.

The establishment of the Jewish National Home has been endorsed by the 52 nations which approved the mandate. They acted after long and careful study. The American Congress unanimously adopted the Lodge-Fish resolution after an extended hearing before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Five Presidents of the United States have spoken in unmistakenly glowing terms of the accomplishments of Jewish Palestine. American legislatures, including my own State of Massachusetts, have adopted resolutions favoring the reconstitution of the icans from all walks of life have expressed their approval of the work that Jews have done in Palestine toward the upbuilding of the Jewish homeland. All these responsible nations, high government officials, legislative bodies, and distinguished personalities have acted with great deliberation. It is impossible to believe that such a distinguished company can all be wrong. … Today a new democracy is growing up in the Jewish homeland in Palestine, founded upon these same principles. This infant democracy has withstood the test for the past 3 years, in which it has had to struggle against the forces of terror …

Forgotten in its archives, the Government itself acknowledged in 1922 the immigration of whole tribes “from the Hejaz and southern Transjordan into the Beersheba area,” a fact which in itself must make its estimates of Arab immigration … Though the Government solemnly estimates in 1937 a total Moslem increase by immigration of only 22535 since the time of the British occupation, 11 evidence of a vast influx of desert tribesmen is obvious everywhere. As early as 1926, Colonial Secretary Amery cautiously conceded that despite the growth of the Jewish element “the increase of the Arabs is actually greater than that of the Jews.” 12 Figures presented before the Peel Commission in 1937 showed the Arab population to have more than doubled itself in fourteen years. This admitted gain in half a generation must either be attributed to outside immigration… http://books.google.com/books?&id=7ZxCAAAAIAAJ&dq=estimates(http://www.scribd.com/doc/39234940/The-Rape-of-Palestine-William-B-Ziff-1938-630pgs-REL)

It is not exceptional to find in Palestine Arabs who have come from as far as the Sudan, Northern Syria, the Hedjaz and the Yemen. Palestine, as Mr. Shertok has said, offers good opportunities of work and good wages and that attracts immigrants from North and East and South, as far as this part of the world is concerned. ..to deal with in my evidence, Trans- Jordan and Hauran, will probably be good examples of what I have just said.[…]EVIDENCE…Do you want to show that there is a good deal of illegal Arab immigration, or a good deal of immigration which necessarily results from the situation in the Hauran? — Yes. I want to show that the Bedouin who were living in the … may pass, which were responsible for this immigration. If you will allow me, I will now turn to Hauran and deal with conditions there. 1583. Do yon mean Syria or the specific part of Syria known as the Hauran? — I am considering Hauran proper considering Hauran proper, but I will say a few words about other parts of Syria as well. It is rather strange that this country, the Hauran, which in ancient times enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most fertile regions of… We have to take into consideration also that that affected very much the social life of the Hauranis. …From the Hauran to Palestine. That was in 1934-35. I ought to say that was a very bad year in the Hauran, as it was a year of drought which affected not only Hauran but Trans-Jordan and, in a lesser degree, Palestine. http://books.google.com/books?id=hloOAQAAIAAJ&q=arab+immigration+palestine+hauranis&dq=arab+immigration+palestine+hauranis

Saskatoon Star-Phoenix – May 5, 1938

Twenty Colonies in Past Year… we have established 20 new settlements in the most desolate and dangerous parts of the country…

Disturbances between the Jews and Arabs were continuing, though in an isolated manner. The Arab masses were being incited against the Jews, Mr. Jaffe asserted, and were being told that the Jews wanted to seize the holy places of the Arabs, “a libel which the Mufti found necessary to repeat before the Royal Commission investigating the problem in Palestine.”

NOT IMPERIALISTIC

Mr. Jaffe is a poet… Their’s [There] was no imperialistic adventure, the visitors declared, but the cultural life of a people looking for expression. “For the last decade Jews have been earning every inch of their way in Palestine with tireless toil and inspired sacrifice,”… “Every acre possessed by Jews in the Holy Land was purchased with Jewish money, won with Jewish tears and blood.” There was no enmity in the Jew toward the Arab or any other people and no attempt of Jews in Palestine to organize forceful demonstrations against the Arabs or to make raids of reprisal.

“The work of reconstruction which were are carrying on in Palestine involves the realization of the eternally historic aspiration of the Jewish people,” Mr. Jaffe said.

“Ever since and throughout the dispersion, the link between people and country was never for a moment wavered.”

A BARE COUNTRY

“The faith in its national renaissance and return to the land has been the meaning and secret of this people’s existence. Only by understanding this faith can one comprehend the marvelous achievement by the Jewish people in the space of a short time.”

Coming to a waste, derelict country of naked hills and bare rocks, swamps and eroded soil, Jewish endeavor, energy and capital had changed the face of the country. New methods of agriculture replaced the primitive cultivation carried on by the Arabs and flourishing colonies supported by fruitful fields and verdant forests had been the result.

In 1918 there were 36.000 Jews in Palestine and according to the census of 1922 the number had increased to 83,000. “Today we have in Palestine a population of 420,000 Jews,” Mr. Jaffe said.

In the same period, Jews in Palestine had established 5,200 industrial enterprises, the total investment in the new endeavor in the old homeland being some 85,000,000. Urban development had kept pace with rural projects. Mr. Jaffe said. Water power had been harnessed, educational institutions established and cultural activity was progressing by leaps and bounds.

“We have been struggling for ourselves and our future. Whatever we have created in Palestine is a boon for all, not for Jews alone. We came to the East as friends, not as enemies. We are bringing to the East culture and freedom for all. We have oppressed no one,” Mr. Jaffe declared.

He contended the Jews had done much to better the Arab populace, had cased the burden of taxation, had provided the means to establish schools and had enabled the Government to construct roads and to improve the standard of living in the country.

“The Arabs have learned new methods of cultivation from us and those villages situated near Hewish settlements have grown prosperous. We have created a market for the products of these villages and widened the scope of work for the Arab laborer,” the Jewish visitor said. Arab immigration into Palestine had been increasing steadily.

PALESTINE. (Hansard, 17 November 1930)Mr. LLOYD GEORGE I wish to… This White Paper is a one-sided document. It is biased. Its whole drift is hostile to the spirit of the mandate… Jewish capital has been flowing into that country since the Peace, and Jewish capital has improved Arab conditions. You cannot pour capital into a country and simply confine its benefits to one section of the community…. you cannot restore a land so let down as this without a good deal of loss, and if these people, who have got an historic affection for this land, are prepared to sink their capital there, and to lose it—they are not people who will do It in every land as a rule—but if they are prepared to do it out of natural love and affection for this country, why should we hinder them?…

The Jews are 20 per cent. of the population, and their contribution to the revenue of Palestine is between 40 and 50 per cent. That is what enabled the Palestine Government to raise a loan of £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 85 —[Interruption]—£4,500,000 was raised as a development loan, most of which provided labour for the Arabs, it was not spent upon the Jewish settlements there. We are told the Jews are using their wealth for the purpose of driving the poor Arab fellaheen from the soil of their fathers. It is not true. Most of the land cultivated by the Jews is land which they have reclaimed from the wilderness. Here and there, no doubt, upon the fringe of a morass, a little squalid Arab village may have been disturbed, but there have only been 700 taken out in order that it might be possible to drain the land. Half of them have been put back on the land and the others have found some other work. Here is a phrase which I will quote to the House: ‘Most of the land acquired by the Jews was swampy and malarial and required heavy expenditure on drainage before it could be made habitable. Much of the rest was sand dunes.’ What is the result? Not merely can you settle more people on the land, but you have improved the health of the community. Malaria is a very serious disease there, and it was slaughtering these poor people, and by this enormous expenditure of Zion and the other associations, such as the Colonisation Society, great tracts of territory have been drained in these areas and malaria has been eliminated. I would like somebody to take the trouble to read the eloquent description given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) when he was Commissioner of Palestine of this area. Its condition before the Jews went there was a swamp, a morass, created by the famous brook of Kishon. There were just a few miserable Arab villages right up on the hillsides, and not very many people there. The Jews spent £900,000 on draining about 50 square miles, and now there is a population of 2,600—probably it is more now. There are 20 villages, there are schools, there is a little forest in what was a treeless waste—this is very important in Palestine, as T shall point out—there is a training college for women for agriculture, and there are hospitals. That is a description of one valley.

… Surely with such an increase of population there must have been a great increase in the employment available for the Arab population. The large increase of population has been due undoubtedly, apart from a considerable Arab immigration, to the measures we have taken, in which the Jews have helped, to improve the health of the country, …http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1930/nov/17/palestine

Palestine Situation .‎Meriden Record – May 24, 1939The British White Paper on Palestine must be considered as a tragic blow to the hopes of the Jewish people who have sought to create in Palestine a homeland for many of the victims of oppression from central and eastern European lands.

The action of the British Government is tantamount to a unilateral repudiation is a sacred pledge and promise contained in the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate. Some twenty years ago fifty-two nations throughout the world including the United States gave to Great Britain the trusteeship of Palestine with the understanding that the British Government would do anything in its power to promote the establishment of a Jewish National Home. On the basis of these pledges and on the basis of the American-British Palestine Mandate Convention on December 3, 1924, American Jewry, together with Jews in other countries, undertook an intensive program of reconstruction in order to provide a home and opportunity in Palestine for their unfortunate brethren in lands of distress.

In the short space of two decades, a thriving Jewish community of 450,000 souls has been established in Palestine. Jewish victims of persecution in the ghettos of European lands came to Palestine to become tillers of the soil and builders of a new economic, social and cultural community which has brought benefits to all inhabitants of the land. The Jewish settlers converted arid land into fertile fields; they drained pestilential swamps; they brought new scientific methods and industry into a country which had been derelict for centuries.

COLONIAL OFFICE. (Hansard, 19 June 1936)=
In normal circumstances the military garrison of Palestine, apart from the Air Force …… There is, I think, evidence that a great deal of the most murderous rioting has been done, not so much by the older resident Arab population as by the wild Hauranis who have come in during the last few years. That is a problem which, I think, merits attention. In any case we have to restore order and we have to make it clear that, while we are prepared to listen to every reasonable grievance, there can be no question of our tearing up obligations which we are bound in honour to observe. Here, as indeed wherever we hold such obligations, whether it be in Africa or elsewhere, let us make it clear, not only to those within our rule, but to those who east covetous eyes upon our rule from outside, that Great Britain and the British Empire are not “on the run,” and that we stand by our responsibilities wherever they may be.

Abroad; Events Increase Pressure for Jewish State in Palestine All Depends on Immigration Important Military BaseBy ANNE O’HARE McCORMICK By Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES.January 13, 1945, Page 10,JERUSALEM, Jan. 12–The present Jewish population of Palestine is estimated by the Jewish Agency to be about 550,000. Some British officers say the actual figure is nearer 700,000 but, assuming the official count is correct, the number of Jews in relation to the Arab population of 1,100,000 has reached the proportion of approximate … of the many-faceted problem is that Arab immigration into this country in the … Add to all this the cries of the people begging to get into Palestine, … http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40910F63C5B12718DDDAA0994D9405B8588F1D3

Rights of the Jewish People to a Sovereign State in their Historic …Nov 16, 2003 … Indeed, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt concluded in 1939 that “Arab immigration into Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded the total Jewish immigration during the whole period.” … http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp507.htm

[Churchill:…] They have harnessed the Jordan and spread its electricity throughout the land. So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population. Now we are asked to decree that all this is to stop and all this is to come to an end. We are now asked to submit – and this is what rankles most with me – to an agitation which is fed with foreign money and ceaselessly inflamed by Nazi and by Fascist propaganda.

The views of many other distinguished men, like Lord Wedgewood, Lloyd George, and General Smuts, are reflected in the following views uttered by Winston Churchill, who, on the occasion of the debate on the White Paper, said: I”~say quite frankly that I find this a melancholy occasion. I feel bound to vote against the proposals of His Majesty’s Government .

[The Jewish national home in Palestine: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Seventy-eighth Congress, second session, on H. Res. 418 and H. Res. 419, resolutions relative to the Jewish national home in Palestine. February 8, 9, 15, and 16, 1944. With appendix of documents relating to the Jewish national home in Palestine<

The largely deserted, vacant, wasteland in: 1700s, 1800s, till early 1900sOld documents from contemporary era, confirm that the notion of a largely ’empty land,’ was/is not a myth after all

“The land of Israel: according to the covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob,” Alexander Keith, Harper & Bros., 1844, p. 43 (History – 388 pages)

… throughout the world, who have nowhere found a place on which the sole of their foot could rest — a people without a country ; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people. http://books.google.com/books?id=y90UAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA43

“Evidence of the truth of the Christian religion, derived from the literal fulfilment of prophecy. With a refutation of A.P. Stanley’s poetical interpretations,” Alexander Keith (Edition 37), 1859, p. 142 (from Oxford University)

These prophecies, and many more, as every reader and believer of the sure word of prophecy knows, are not to be cast back to the dark and troublous days of Ezra, nor limited to any times that are past. They are facts in the present day, which have for their witnesses Volney and Stanley, as well as every other traveller who has visited that land of ruins, or seen the forsaken cities ‘ Syria and Palestine, p. 118, 119. « Isaiah Ix. 21 ; 111. 4.

which once were Israel’s There are old wastes; there are former desolations; there are waste cities; there are cities without inhabitant, and houses without man; there are heaps of ruins to be raised up again ; prostrate cities, with their paved streets and solid foundations, lying as they fell, to be built up again; there are partly ruined cities to be repaired again; and empty or forsaken cities, with every house and street entire, waiting for the time when they shall be filled with men.http://books.google.com/books?id=gucGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA142

INDUSTRIAL STATE OF THE POPB’S DOMINIONS. ‘I had not travelled long in the Papal States till I Baw that the whole country presented an aspect as deserted and dreary as Palestine itself. The sky was cloudless, the atmosphere clear, and the climate without a fault, but the face of the earth seemed as if under the curse of the Almighty. It was waste and wet, unfenced and uncultivated, and thinly peopled, full of willows, briars, and thorns, overgrown with weeds, and worn out with scourging, cropping, and all manner of mismanagement. A solitary dwelling, standing like a square tower, is to be seen here, and another not nearer than a mile or two distant, and between the two nothing is seen to exist. No cattle comparatively speaking are grazing; no farmers with their family or servants are working in the fields; no ploughmen whistling between the stilts; no shepherd with his flocks and herds—all is solitude equal to that in the Valley of Gilgal, in the plains of Galilee, or in the reeking swamps of Asia Minor. Every eight or ten miles along the road there is a station presenting a series of stone walls and dead-like buildings, surpassing far in deserted dreariness the resting places in the desert between Grand Cairo and Suez. Forth from one door of the inn there issue a few ostlers, lazy and dirty, who talk and yawn, and rub their eyes, and by-and-bye commence to unharness the horses. This once accomplished they begin to tnink of bringing forth the other lean, luboerly animals which are doomed to drag the menagerie to the next stage. The machine actually begins to move again, and we proceed at the rate of Wombwell’s caravans, or a little faster. I state it as a positive fact, that from Civita Vecchia, and almost till I reached Rome, our cavalcade met, on this grand approach from the only harbour of the capital of Italy, only two empty carts, which had evidently been in town with fruit. The picture of civilized life is as lamentable as can well be imagined. No single trace of happy, prosperous, wellpaid industry greets the eye along the whole road from one end of it to the other. Rags, filth, ignorance, and superstition are the prominent features that meet the observation of the traveller. There are no schools but for the education of young priests. And in the cultivation of the fields there is an evident neglect of all the approved methods of turning land to profit. I believe the roads have not been repaired since the death of the twelve Caesars. http://books.google.com/books?id=pJktAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA703(“Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country,” John W. Parker and Son, West Strand, 1852, p. 703http://books.google.com/books?id=Cv4EAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA703)

“The land that is desolate: an account of a tour in Palestine,” Sir Frederick Treves, Smith, Elder, 1912, Travel, 287 pages [from the University of California

p. 156…is the imperial city of Caesarea, the once proud seaport, the city built by Herod the Great — Caesarea the superb, that was at one period the most important city in the whole of Palestine. It is now a mere wraith, a formless drift of stones and dust tenanted by slum dwellers, and, as Dean Stanley says, the most desolate site in the Holy Land. The harbour, once full of brilliant galleys and masts fluttering with flags, is nearly silted up ; the mole, at one time crowded by porters and seamen and piled up with bales of goods..http://books.google.com/books?id=LZSBAAAAIAAJ&q=palestine

p. 283Mount Carmel offered a certain amount of shelter to the ship, and in an ordinary gale the anchorage would have been secure, but this was not an ordinary gale. We were hanging on to two anchors, and were doing well until about 7.30 in… On the following morning I ventured out on deck to look upon one of the most desolate scenes in the world — a grey sea in a gale..http://books.google.com/books?id=LZSBAAAAIAAJ&q=gale

The following is an account by a Jewish eyewitness of the condition of the Maritime Plain in 1913. It was, we believe, at the time when it was written, a truthful and disinterested description. The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts. This track was dry and open for travel in the summer months only. In the rainy season it was impassable.In the villages on both sides of the track and as far as the hills to the east no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached Yabna Village. Trees generally were a rare sight in these villages. . . . Nor were there any vegetable gardens to be seen in any of these villages except at … Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen. The roofs were of caked mud… In all the villages dotting the plain between Gaza and Jaffa there was only one well in a village and in the smaller villages there were no wells at all. . . . Not in a single village in all this area was water used for irrigation… The sanitary conditions in the villages were horrible. Schools did not exist and the younger generation rolled about in the mud of the streets. The rate of infant mortality was very high. . There was no medical service in any of the villages distant from a Jewish settlement. The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert….The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants. http://books.google.com/books?&id=X8IMAQAAIAAJ&dq=trackhttp://books.google.com/books?id=X8IMAQAAIAAJ&dq=vineyardshttp://books.google.com/books?&id=X8IMAQAAIAAJ&dq=mudhttp://books.google.com/books?&id=X8IMAQAAIAAJ&dq=thinlyReport Great Britain. Palestine Royal Commission – H.M. Stationery off., 1937 – 404 pages] p. 172http://books.google.com/books?&id=ynGFAAAAIAAJ&dq=gazahttp://books.google.com/books?&id=ynGFAAAAIAAJ&dq=dotting([PDF] THE OPERATION OF THE MANDATEhttp://www.britaininpalestine.org.uk/en/document_item.asp?id=44&type=)

[AREA OF PALESTINE]A few years ago the writer of an official report for the Board of Trade on British commerce in Syria stated that Syria and Palestine “possessed all the advantages of soil and climate and a hard-working population which, under better administration and security and the establishment of inland communications, would help to render the region one of the most prosperous portions of the Ottoman dominions.” He noted that while the emigration of Syrians to America was the feature in the country to the north, the immigration of Jews was the feature in Palestine. The total trade passing through the port of Jaffa has doubled in six years, and that despite the untoward effect of wars and the threat of war. A strong and prudent government will need a large influx of energetic people to develop the neglected resources of the country. For though its population has multiplied by immigration during the last half century, and it has to-day some 700,000 inhabitants, it is still in large measure an empty land. Outside the towns there are but 250,000 Arabs in possession of the country, and but 8 per cent, of the soil is fully cultivated. http://books.google.com/books?id=5MEpAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA201

The story has now been told of the vicissitudes which Palestine and its peoples have undergone since its subjugation by the Romans. Conquest has followed conquest from that day almost to this. Roman, Byzantine, Frank, Saracen, Turk, have all held sway for long periods. For shorter ones other conquerors have had possession of the land. In all ages Palestine has been an object of desire and of contention. Ruler has succeeded to ruler, but seldom have the subjects benefited by the change. With the exception of the period of Frankish domination, Palestine has always been governed in the interests not of its own people, but of those of another land; and even under the Franks the interests of the indigenous populations were invariably made subservient to those of new-comers. The history of Palestine during the past eighteen centuries has been bounteous in incidents. In prosperity, however, it has shown an almost uninterrupted degeneration. The Romans found the country thickly inhabited by a population generally prosperous. The forthcoming congress for the settlement of the affairs of civilization will look upon it as almost a desert land inhabited by a sparse and on the whole poverty-stricken population.http://books.google.com/books?id=reJGAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA279

…a land flowing with milk and honey only under Jewish settlement. Centuries of Turkish rule, of Arab squatting, have desolated a beautiful country. Sand dunes, pyramid high, shift along the coasts where once were splendid forests. The Jews are planting them again. They have set a million trees in Palestine— eucalyptus for shade, boxwood for orange crates and as an antidote against malaria. Olives, almonds, and oranges have been planted.

If Palestine is a prize for which peoples bid with tangible demonstrations of their love, then to date the Jews are bidding highest. Not from Jewish lips alone does the testimony come. Major Ormsby Gore, a British attache of the Zionist Commission in Palestine, said: “I have crossed miles of desert, broken only by the mud huts of the Arabs, in stretches of desolate land. And then I have come upon green groves; a synagogue; a school; white stone houses, with red-tiled roofs; civilization. These were the Jewish colonies, the only oases in the Palestinian desert.” There is water-power in Palestine, and shortly it will have to be utilized for canneries, box factories, and other industries which will inevitably follow agricultural development. But for the time being the Zionists are placing their confidence in a sound agricultural life.

Few Christians know the story of how Hebrew, the language of the Bible, has been made a living, spoken tongue. One man, Ben Yehudah, a sort of divine fanatic, started the movement. He would speak no language but Hebrew even to his old mother, who could not understand a word. He is writing the first dictionary which can be used for modern everyday expressions. Twenty years ago, when he went to Palestine and undertook the task, he was dying of tuberculosis. He still has tuberculosis, but his dictionary, they say, is keeping him alive. He has lived to see Hebrew spoken by every Jewish child in Palestine, the foundations of a Hebrew University laid on the Mount of Olives, and schools throughout the land.

THE POLITICAL EFFECT OF ZIONISM!

Jews from Palestine were warm in the assertion that their troubles with the Arabs had been stirred up by outside imperialistic influences. At no time during the Conference was there a dissenting voice to the often-repeated policy that the interests of Arabs and Jews in (Palestine and in the East must be considered-identical. They pointed out that Palestine under cultivation can accommodate five times its present population, and that no Arab need be crowded out. Moreover, the temper of the Zionist movement is distinctly anti-imperial. , The writer was probably the only Christian who sat through every session of this historic Conference. By far the most memorable impression of the meeting is of the courage and idealism which never failed to rise above the often sharp dissonances of varied experiences and insuperable gulfs of language and custom. This was the meeting of a nation which lies, outside of Palestine… The predominant aim could excite only admiration, and regret that so many eminent Jews, whose talents have contributed greatly to the building of other nations, were not present to contribute to the planning of this their own peculiar experiment.

The eyes of Jewry, and of many nonJews, will watch three men upon whose shoulders the Conference put the execution of its plans: Mr. Chaim Weizmann, whose irresistible presentation of Zionist claims..

CHAPTER IVACHIEVEMENTSBackground The problems of Jewish Palestine present in many ways a depressing picture. Its features are sorbid, its colors dark. Here is a land which was never rich, and is now neglected, wasted and wretchedly poor. This land is sparsely populated by Arabs, denizens of the most primitive type of civilization, illiterate, ignorant, superstitious, savage. In this land are a few Moslem trading centers (Jaffa, Haifa), a few Christian towns (Nazareth, Bethelehem), a few Jewish cities (Safed, Hebron) , and Jerusalem, the ancient stronghold of David, now the holy city of Jew, Christian and Moslem. But otherwise Palestine is an empty and desolate country, through which pass the ancient camel trails, and wander the Fellaheen shepherds and the Bedouin hillsmen. Over this land before the War ruled the Turk, indifferent, inefficient, corrupt, cruel. Since the war has come the rule of the English, honest, able, but consistently in the interest not so much of the inhabitants of Palestine, either Arab or Jew, as of the Empire of many peoples in many far-flung quarters of the world. Into this land have come the Jews, through a long succession of years. Always there were pilgrims — young men, to visit the ancient shrines and seats of learning, old men [p. 172] and women, to lay their bones in the sacred soil of the fathers. In 1881, and succeeding years, came streams of refugees from Russia and eastern Europe, in search of a home in the ancient shelters of their race. In 1897 began the Zionist Movement, with its deliberate purpose and endeavor to take over the land and make it again the national homeland of the Jewish people. From this time on, until comparatively recent years, a flood of youthful pioneers has poured itself into the country, glad in the vision of the new Zion, the new society of Israel, which leaps like a fountain within their hearts. It is this new society, now built and building, which constitutes the achievement of Zionism. It seems a wonderful achievement, especially as set and seen against the background of this wasted land and savage people. http://books.google.com/books?id=092iadCw-qIC&pg=PA171

A German Encyclopedia published in 1827 calls Palestine “desolate and roamed through by Arab bands of robbers.” Irby, who visited the country in 1817-18, found “not a single boat of any description on the lake (of Tiberias),”[…] In Hebron many houses are in a dilapidated state and uninhabited”; The once populated region between Hebron and Bethlehem is “now abandoned and desolate with dilapidated towns.” In Jerusalem, a large number of houses are in a ruinous state[…]In 1883 Col. Conder calls Palestine “a ruined land.” The decline of the population was ascribed by Olin to the want of medical knowledge and skill, while the same traveller found abject and squalid poverty, lack of employment, an abandoned and desolate countryside and dilapitated towns …the travellers. They agree that the population was on the decline, that “so far as the Arab race is concerned, it appears to be decreasing rather than otherwise.” Conder, who visited Palestine in 1872 and again in 1881-82, deplores the decline of the country and the population during these ten years. “The peasantry who are the backbone of the population, have diminished most sadly in numbers…http://books.google.com/books?&id=CzYzAAAAMAAJ&dq=squalidhttp://books.google.com/books?&id=CzYzAAAAMAAJ&dq=boathttp://books.google.com/books?&id=CzYzAAAAMAAJ&dq=conder

By the outbreak of World War one there were over 100000 Jews in Palestine. Many of these Jews volunteered to fight in British units which drove the Turkish army out of the country in 1918. By the end of the fighting there remained but 50,000 Jews in the country, but by 1929 it had reached a total of 162,000. Between 1922 and 1929 the Arab population had increased 50% to 800,000.The Jewish pioneers who came to this almost abandoned wasteland in large numbers at the beginning of the 20th century were.. idealists who believed that to reclaim a marsh through their own toil and establish villages where no …The country was derelict and almost empty. Its sparse population consisted of a relative handful of settled Arabs and Jews. The Arabs neither thought of themselves as a national entity nor did they claim the country as a homeland.. On Arab demand, was the restriction of Jewish immigration to Palestine… The British restricted Jewish immigration during those two decades and permitted Arab immigration to flow freely into the country. By so doing the British premeditatedly; guaranteed a majority Arab status in violation of the League of Nation.. http://books.google.com/books?id=661WAAAAMAAJ&q=1918http://books.google.com/books?id=661WAAAAMAAJ&q=leaguehttp://books.google.com/books?id=661WAAAAMAAJ&q=arab+immigration

Throughout the nineteenth century the favorite adjectives of travellers describing the Holy Land, beginning with the French Count de Volney who visited the country in 1785, are “ruined” and “desolate.” Each successive writer mourns the further decline of the country. A. Keith (The Land of Israel) writing some decades after Volney, comments: “In his (Volney’s) day the land had not fully reached its last degree of desolation and depopulation” and he estimates that the population had shrunk by half. By 1883, Colonel Condor (Heath and Moab) calls Palestine bluntly “a ruined land.” And, of course, Americans are familiar with Mark Twain’s shocked account of the Holy Land’s total “desolation” which introduces a somber note into his Innocents Abroad.THE REFUGEE PROBLEMUp to World War I the picture of Palestine is one of waste land…

There was another fact that gave immediate practical impact to the logic and justice of Jewish restoration. Palestine was a virtually empty land. When Jewish independence came to an end in the year 70, the population numbered, at a conservative estimate, some five million people. (By Josephus’ figure, there were nearly seven million.) Even sixty years after the destruction of… In 1785, Constantine Francois Volney described the “ruined” and “desolate” country. He had not seen the worst. http://books.google.com/books?id=1LBtAAAAMAAJ&dq=empty+landhttp://books.google.com/books?id=eVSEAAAAIAAJ&q=volney

During this time the land of Israel stood desolate. Its successive conquerors saw in it occupied territory. It never became a separate sovereignty again. The Arab and other Moslem rulers never considered its ancient capital Jerusalem even as an administrative center….from the inhabitants of neighboring lands. They never produced a national culture of their own. They never produced a national culture of their own. They never aspired to be regarded as a separate political entity. Travelers who visited the area described it always as a dying land. The Frenchman Volney, who toured Palestine in 1785, wrote that it was “desolate.” A. Keith, writing some decades after Volney, commented: “In his [Volney’s] day the land had not reached its last degree of desolation and depopulation… http://books.google.com/books?id=tnxtAAAAMAAJ&q=palestine+desolationhttp://books.google.com/books?id=tnxtAAAAMAAJ&q=desolate

… And in 1857, the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, reported back to England, “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.” http://books.google.com/books?id=yRf8P5ddCgwC&pg=PT44

This uncouth beast is particularly valuable in Buffaloes in Palestine. all swampy districts, which the malaria renders almost uninhabitable, even to animals; indeed, buffaloes can not live without the opportunity of frequently plunging …http://books.google.com/books?id=jkiBAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA176

As I told you yesterday, the country we are travelling through is really beautiful, the views varied and charming. Beginning our day with a short climb, we reached the top of a high range of niountains, with a wide deep valley between us and Mount Hermon, of which we now had a noble view, it being quite free from cloud, and. the Lebanon range in the distance, which is still covered with a good deal of snow. It was a long and steep descent into the valley, followed by a rather wearisome and warm ride across low swampy ground. We crossed three wide streams. some of the sources of the Jordan. During the middle of the day we stopped at Dan, the ancient Lachish, which was conquered and retained by the tribe of Dan, although at such a distance. It is the place meant in the passage from ‘Dan even to Beersheba,’ as representing the most northern and southern towns within the tribes. This Dan is a curious mound standing in the middle of a swampy flat; from it gushes out SOURCES OF THE JORDAN 195http://books.google.com/books?id=Mw0qAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA194

From ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ of 1891:1. Main city of Upper Gallilee: Safed, predominantly Jewish.2. Most Muslims appear NOT to be Arab.3. There are some Algerian (Arab) settlers.4. There are also “wandering Arabs.”

Upper Galilee.—The mountains are tilted up towards the sea of Galilee, and the drainage of the district is towards the north-west On the south the rocky range of Jebel Jermuk rises to 4000 feet above the sea; on the east a narrow ridge 2800 feet high forms the watershed, with steep eastern slopes falling towards Jordan. Immediately west of the watershed are two small plateaus, covered with basaltic debris, near el Jish and Kades.

On the west are rugged mountains with deep intricate valleys. The main drains of the country are—first, Wady el ‘Ayun; rising north of Jebel Jermuk, and running north-west as an open valley, and secondly, Wady el Ahjar, a rugged precipitous gorge running north to join the Leontes. The district is well provided with springs throughout, and the valleys are full of water iu the spring time. Though rocky and difficult, Upper Galilee is not barren, the soil of the plateaus is rich, and the vine flourishes in the higher hills, especially in the neighbourhood of Kefr Birim. The principal town is Safed, perched on a white mountain 2700 feet above the sea. It has a population of about 9000, including Jews, Christians, and Moslems. It is one of the four sacred cities in Palestine revered by the Jews, to which nationality the majority of the inhabitants belong. Among the smaller towns we may notice Meirun, near Safed, a place also much revered by the Jews as containing the tombs of Hillel Shammni, and Simon bar Jochai. A yearly festival of most curious character is here celebrated in honour of these rabbis.’ The site of Hazor, one of the chief towns of Galilee in Bible times, has also been lately recovered. It was situated, according to Josephus, above the Lake Semechonitis (Bahr el Huleii), and the namo Hudireh, identical with the Hebrew.

Hazor, has been found by the survey party in 1877 applying to a mountain and plain, near an ancient ruin, in the required position. The little village of Kades represents the once important town of Kadesh Naphtali (Josh. xix. 37). The ruins are here extensive and interesting, but belong apparently to the Greek period.The population of Galilee is mixed. In Lower Galilee the peasants are principally Moslem, with a sprinkling of Greek Christians round Nazareth, which is a Christian town. In Upper Galilee, however, there is a mixture of Jews and Maronites, Druses and Moslems (natives or Algerine settlers), while the slopes above the Jordan are inhabited by wandering Arabs. The Jews are engaged in trade, and the Christians, Druses, and Moslems in agriculture; and the Arabs are an entirely pastoral people.http://books.google.com/books?id=PKMUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28

INHABITANTS OF ‘SYRIA AND PALESTINE[…]Like those of Anatolia, the inhabitants of Palestine consist of two distinct elements, the wandering Bedouins and the fellahin settled in villages and the outskirts of the towns. The former are diminishing in Palestine proper, where a few are found only in the Plain of Sharon, between Carmel and Jaffa. Beyond the Jordan, where they are still numerous, the chief Bedouin tribes are the Adwan (11,000), and the more powerful but less numerous Beni-Sakhr, or ” Sons of the Rocks.” In the Sinaitic peninsula, the Towarah, as they are collectively called, number about 8,000… Amongst the Bedouins, who appear to be of diverse origin, some gipsies are also found wandering under the name of Nauri. The Palestine fellahin, generally called Kufars or ” Villagers,” are despised by the Arabs on account of their rude speech and servile character. Yet they are mostly well made, and the women of Narazeth and Bethlehem are renowned for their beauty, which rightly or wrongly is attributed to a mixture of European elements. In some districts women taken in adultery are still stoned, and leprosy. http://books.google.com/books?id=JvCXWIJ90p0C&dq=Beni-Sakhrhttp://www.archive.org/stream/earthitsinhabita09recl/earthitsinhabita09recl_djvu.txt

Some notes on earlier Jewish presence in Palestine[including massacres, persecution by non-Arab Muslims]

The Demographic and Ethnic Changes in Palestine – An Overview The data and considerations cited above enable us to propose a probable reconstruction of the settlement history in the various regions of Palestine in the fourth and fifth centuries. The regional division is based on the regional data presented… 1) Western Galilee (Including the Lower Galilee, the Carmel, and Possibly also the Jezreel Valley) Until the midfourth century the Jewish community constituted a decisive majority in Galilee. The population in the cities was mixed, while the villages were predominantly Jewish. Alon collected much evidence of this. The sources assume that a majority of the region’s inhabitants were Jewish. http://books.google.com/books?id=GQ-1OsGWvw8C&pg=PA78

The Local Population and the Muslims There is no reason to assume that the proportions in the structure of the population varied drastically in the period in question, although it is very likely that the population diminished. In other words, one should not assume that the Muslims were the majority during this period Al-Istakhri mentions in 951 that in all of jund Filastin there were approximately twenty mosques, as against some sixty Christian houses of worship at the beginning of the ninth century. During the days of the Umayyads,… in about 800… Of particular interest is the passage which states that Yahya was ‘from the Jews living in the Balqa” (min yahud al-balqa’) and so we learn that at that time, there was still a Jewish population in southern Trans-Jordan. http://books.google.com/books?id=M0wUKoMJeccC&pg=PA171

“Holy War for the Promised Land: Israel at the Crossroads,” David Dolan, B&H Publishing Group, 2003 [280 pages] p. 51

Mob violence against the Jews of Hebron broke out in 1775. Safed, which had been restored by a liberal Turkish ruler after the 1660 massacre, was again sacked in 1799. At this time, a sadistic Albanian-born Muslim nicknamed “the butcher” gained power in the region. He ordered the beheading of any subject who displeased him — especially dhimmi (non-Muslim) subjects. http://books.google.com/books?id=BuOIcqF8NvgC&dq=butcher

…albeit this subsumes such outrages as the confiscation of the Jerusalem synagogue and its conversion into a mosque in the middle of the fifteenth century ; the wave of terror launched against Jews in Jerusalem by Mohammad Ibn Farukh between 1625-27; the closing of synagogues in 1655 to enforce payment of confiscatory taxation; the pogroms in Safad in 1834 and 1838; the pogroms in Jaffa early in this century; etc. http://books.google.com/books?id=3tIMAQAAMAAJ&q=1834

“Near East report”: Volume 11, Near East Report, Inc., 1967, p, 20

… of the ferocious persecution at the hands of Mohammed ibn Farukh in Jerusalem in 1625-7; of the closing of the synagogues in order to enforce the payment of new oppressive taxation in 1655, of pogroms in Safed in 1834 and 1838… http://books.google.com/books?&id=6bMMAQAAMAAJ&dq=1834

… Western society have been persuaded that the real focus is on the so-called Palestinians and a “homeland” for them. … Such as Roiphe ignore the results of the British meddling in the Middle East: their setting up of Saudi Arabia and Jordan and their military occupation of mandatory Palestine, which in the middle and late 1930s forbade immigration of Jews except those who could provide employment for Arabs, who were admitted freely.

In fact, there are many British files, dating from the beginning of the Mandate to the 1940s, which contain references to Syrians from the Hauran being admitted freely to Palestine without passport or visa. The British authorities in Palestine tended to count the Arab illicit immigrants as indigenous deeply rooted Palestinians… The Determinants of British Policy… Matters improved with the departure of Lieutenant General Sir Louis Bols on 30 May 1920, the ending of the military adminidstration and the appointment of Sir Samuel as the first British High Commisioner for Palestine. However, under constant pressure from British pro-Arab spokesmen and officials, relations between Britian and the Jewish Zionists deteriorated steadily.A Very good exaple of virtuallly general anti-Zionist bias of successsive British mandatory adiminstrations would be the virtual continuation of the Ottoman policy of supporting or at least condoning non-Jewish illegal [p. 31] immigration to Palestine. In contrast to the near universal and general condemntation and confrontation with Jewish illegal immigration.As a buffer against the Bedouin the Ottomans had already brought the first Circassians from the Caucasus to Palestine in 1878. These truculant habitual warriors had been settled by the Turks as irregular garrisons on the desert fringes, allowing them to occupy and cultivate land, and thus hold back the nomad Arabs, who neither paid tax nor tilled the land at any time. Egyptian immigrants were settled by Ibrahim Pasha in Jaffa, Acre, Nablus and Beisan, Moors and Kurds settled in Safed, while the Arab tribes of the Wulda, Bu Sheille, Lheib and Adwquat, having been defeated in tribal wars and raids, entered Palestine at about the same time as the first Jewish settlers arrived. These Arabs cannot be considered indigenous to the land and neither can the Turks, Kurds, Moors, Algerians, Egyptians and Circassians imported by the Turks as aprotective force. The virtually generally accepted British claim of an overwhelming Arab indigenous population, settled for a thousand years in a crowded Palestine, whe were in danger of being swamped and displaced by the Jews was, therefore, considered by the more extreme Zionists to be a rewriting of history.Illegal Jewish immigration was always fastidiously reported by successive British administrations, while the very considerable Arab illegal immigration was only addressed when their detection has became flagrant. The British Mandatory authorities whose tasks included recording the comings and goings in Palestine, was occasionally forced to mention the illegal Arab immigration, but only when the battle became too prevalent. The movement was always underestimated, minimised and considered casual:

In addition to increase in recorded immigration, a number of persons are known to enter Palestine illegally from both adjacent and European countries and remain there permanently.Considerable Arab immigration was indeed proceeding without restriction or record from such areas as Syria, Egypt, Trans-Jordan and Lebanon. There has been some immigration from the surrounding territories, which, since it avoids the frontier controls, is not recorded.

Jewish illegal immigration was minutely detailed and meticulously recorded but all references to Arab illegal immigration were, perhaps deliberately, obscured. The preponderant concentration on the Jewish illegal immigration overwhelemd and negated all record of the parallel Arab traffic.Tewfik Bey al-Haurani, Governer of the Hauran, was quoted as saying, ‘In the last few months from 30,000 to 36,000 Hauranese Syrians have entered Palestine and settled there.’ http://books.google.com/books?id=LsgnW34jp90C&pg=PA31&dq=arab+immigration+palestine

…the British imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine. Those restrictions were tightened in the 1930s, just when Jews in Europe were attempting to escape Nazi persecution.The British imposed these restrictions because the Arabs of Palestine, at the time the overwhelming majority of the population, strongly objected to Jewish immigration. During the 1920s and 1930s, their anger erupted into protests and acts of violence directed at the Jews, whose population nonetheless rose from 50,000 in 1917 to 350,000 in 1939. Yet Jews were far from the only immigrants entering Palestine. In fact, during the years the British restricted Jewish immigration, they did nothing to restrict extensive Arab immigration from neighboring countries, which had been going on for decades. http://books.google.com/books?id=0xAh8wbCqEUC&pg=PT78

…the establishment of an independent Arab Government for Palestine, which was, of course, the complete opposite of what was required to be done under the Mandate’s provisions. This British policy of converting a Jewish Palestine into an Arab Palestine reached its outrageous apex in the infamous White Paper of May 17, 1939, presented by Colonial Secretary Malcolm Macdonald on behalf of the British Government led by Prime Minister Nevill Chamberlain. That constituted an unrivaled act of diabolical treachery that will be remembered for all time because it prevented the rescue of millions of Jews trapped in the Holocaust who could have found refuge in Palestine, had the British truly implemented the Mandate as they were legally required to do.nstituting various restrictions on the entry of Jews into Palestine, despite Britains’ solemn international obligation to facilitate Jewish immigration to make possible the creation of an eventual independent Jewish State.

These restrictions imposed by Britain were justified by a concept not found in the Mandate, the economic absorptive capacity of the country. The inevitable result was to prevent Jews from becoming a majority of the population of Palestine in as short a period as possible, as originally visualized in the San Remo Resolution and Articles 2 and 6 of the Mandate. Conversely and ironically, the British authorities allowed hundreds of thousands of Arabs to cross over illegally into Cisjordanian Palestine, especially from Syria and Transjordan, thus doubling the size of the local Arab population and frustrating the aim of a de facto Jewish state.

While these constraints were enforced against Jewish immigration, the technocrats in Whitehall were happy to encourage Arab immigration, both official and unofficial. No passport or visa qualifications were required. No police patrols or investigations were ever launched. No passport or visa qualifications were required. No police patrols or investigations were ever launched. No illegals were ever impounded, provided they were Arab.In 1933, owing to a poor harvest, 35000 Arabs immigrated from the Syrian province of Hauran. Two-thousand came from Damascus and ten-thousand Druse fled from Egypt to Palestine. Years earlier whole tribes had come north from the Hejaz.Formal British estimates (Peel Commission Report) acknowledged that the Arab population had doubled in fourteen years. In effect, the plans of Whitehall were being put in place. In flagrant contradiction of its obligations under the Mandate, Britain was illicitly trying to convert Palestine into an Arab state. http://books.google.com/books?id=3p2FZ-_0Z70C&pg=PA67

Dispelling the sands thrown in the eye by “Palestinian” propaganda’s intentional fooling cloudness machine.Clarity factors:1. Among the ingredients of this salad group, Non-Arab Muslims, non-Arab Bedouins.2. The “inclusion” in early census of what is today Jordan

Wherever Jews settled, the Arab population also increased, starting a pattern that would continue for the next two centuries. The Jewish presence had always been especially strong in Jerusalem and by 1820 it had prompted Britain’s Anglican Church to set up a mission for Jewish conversion… In 1844 the Turkish rulers carried out Jerusalem’s first census. It showed a population of just over 15000, broken down as follows: Jews: 7120Moslems: 5720Christians: 3390 As these figures show, the Jews formed a plurality within the city. Moreover, as the figures fail to show, the ratio of Jews to Arabs was greater than the ratio of Jews to Moslems since not all the city’s Moslems were Arabs. Turks alone must have made up a good many, possibly a majority of the city’s Moslem population.But if Palestine’s cities and towns were not teeming with Palestinian Arabs, neither, so it appears, was its countryside. In 1835 a French traveler, Alfonse de Lamartine, reported how “outside the gates of Jerusalem, we saw indeed no living object and heard no living sound.” In 1857 the American writer, Herman Melville, arrived in Palestine by ship and viewing the scene from the deck of his vessel, saw only “a desert of rocks.” This impression was subsequently reinforced by his trip through Judea where he found “unleavened nakedness of isolation.” A dozen years later another American writer, Mark Twain , made a more extensive trip to Palestine. In Galilee, Twain found an “unpeopled desert,” Jericho was a mere “paper village,” while Bethlehem was “untenanted by any living creature. In contrast to the “verdant land” extolled by Arafat, Twain saw hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Palestine, he said, “is desolate and unlovely.” As late as 1881, when the first substantial Jewish immigrations started to arrive, a British photographer found he could ride for miles and miles with “no appearance of life and habitation.” Of course there were Arabs in Palestine, in all far more of them than there were Jews. But a good many of these Arabs were Bedouins and hence cannot be considered “Palestinians.” (As we will see in the next chapter, the Bedouins have a decidedly different relationship with Israel.) As for “Palestinians,” a census taken by the Turks in 1881 showed 144000 ” settled” ie, non-Bedouin Moslems living in Palestine. In assessing this figure we must take into account two qualifying circumstances. The first is the aforementioned fact that not all Moslems in Palestine were Arabs. The second is that Palestine then included what is today Jordan. Thus the number of non-Bedouin Arabs living in what Palestinians today call Palestine was probably no more than 100000 and may well have been less. The numbers, however, were starting to increase and would increase substantially , indeed sweepingly, in the years to come. Two developments would cause this to come about. The Turks had become worried about growing nationalist sentiments in their already faltering empire, and to dilute such sentiments, they began shifting their subjects around. They were apparently especially interested in settling more of their subjects in Palestine where marauding Bedouins were making a shambles of Turkish rule. So they transferred to Palestine not just Arabs from other lands but non-Arabs as well. Whole villages of Moors, Syrians, and even Bosnians-parts of Europe were still under Turkish rule- were resettled in Palestine. Moors, for example, soon made up most of the Moslems in Safed. These non-Arabs were eventually absorbed into the expanding population, and this brings us to the second and more critical development: the arrival of large numbers of Jews. Jews had begun to immigrate in growing numbers all through the 19th century, but when Russia began unleashing its savage pogroms at the beginning of the 1880s, their numbers increased substantially… As more Jews arrived, so did more Arabs, eager to take advantage of the economic opportunites the Jews were creating. In 1895 a French geographer, Vital Cincinet, estimated the population of the area at 450000, of whom 250000 were “settled” [non- Bedouin] Moslems. In other words, the “Palestinian” population had almost doubled in 13 years, with nearly all the increase occurring in the areas where the Jews were settling… During this time the Arab population in areas where the Jews had not yet settled had actually remained stagnant and even slightly declined. As Dr. Carl Herman Boss, chairman of the American Christian Palestine Committee, would say in 1952, “The Arab population of Palestine was small and limited until Jewish resettlement restored the barren lands and drew to it Arabs from neighboring countries.”http://books.google.com/books?id=BeFC9bAG2B0C&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289

Palestine: The Original Sin

Meir Abelson

[…]Those Were the DaysToday, the word Zionism is anathema to the Muslim Arabs, but it was not always so. Zionism did not begin with Theodore Herzl in 1897; the whole history of the Jews is a yearning for a reborn Jewish state. Throughout the entire 19th century, the return of the Jews to the Holy Land was so widely supported in Britain, the United States and France that such eminent persons as Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, John Adams, the second President of the United States, General Smuts of South Africa, President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, British Prime Ministers Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour, President Woodrow Wilson, Benedetto Croce, Italian philosopher and historian, Henri Durant, founder of the Red Cross and author of the Geneva Conventions, Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian scientist and humanitarian, were among its enthusiastic proponents. The French government through Minister M. Cambon formally committed itself to “the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago”. Even in faraway China, Wang, Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared that “the Nationalist government is in full sympathy with the Jewish people in their desire to establish a country for themselves.”

In fact, there is a list of over 50 eminent people from more than 20 countries who appear in the gallery of non-Jewish Zionists. Representing the political, intellectual elite of many nations, many of them had traveled widely throughout the Land; but all – even those who had not – could hardly have been unaware of the written evidence – report after report – of travelers who testified as to the barren and desolate state of Palestine. The most famous was Mark Twain, who recorded after his visit in 1867: “Stirring scenes occur in the valley (Jezreel) no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for thirty miles in either direction. …One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings.” Of the Galilee, he wrote of “…these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness…” Nazareth he described as “forlorn”, Jericho as “a moldering ruin”.

Thirty years later, in 1898, German Kaiser Wilhelm II also visited Palestine. He was appalled at the condition of the country. The Ottomans had stripped the forests for lumber and firewood. The Palestinian Arabs had let an old Roman aqueduct fall into ruin. The ultimate ecological curse was the ubiquitous herds of black goats. For nearly 2,000 years after the dispersion of the Jews, Arabs had allowed their goats to graze unfenced across Palestine. They had eaten the grass down to its roots, and the topsoil had eroded and blown away. The biblical land of milk and honey had become a dust bowl.

In 1891, Dr. W.E. Blackstone, quoting the foremost authorities on international law, pointed out that since the Jews never gave up their title to Palestine, the general “law of dereliction” did not apply in their case; “for they never abandoned the land. They made no treaty; they did not even surrender. They simply succumbed, after the most desperate conflict, to the overwhelming power of the Romans…” Blackstone quoted the leading legal authorities of his day, who agreed that the Jewish claim is legally sound – and this remains so to this day.

Arabs Welcome Jews Home

And what of “Arab nationalism”? At that time, no one had heard of a “Palestine Arab people”; the term was not invented until after 1964, entirely for political reasons. The British Peace Handbook No. 60, published in 1918, declared that “the people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arab speaking… In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race…they (the Arabs of Palestine) have little if any national sentiment…they hide their weapons at the call of patriotism.” The idea that Palestine should be Arab was never even contemplated. On the contrary, the attitude of the Arabs to the Jewish National Movement was one of almost unanimous approval. In 1906, Farid Kassab, a famous Syrian author, expressed the view uniformly held by the Arabs: “The Jews of the Orient are at home. This land is their only fatherland. They don’t know any other.” A year later, Dr. Moses Gaster reported that he had “held conversations with some of the leading sheiks, and they all expressed pleasure at the advent of the Jews, for they considered that with them had come ‘barakat’ – blessing, since the rain came in due season.”

Throughout Arabia, the chiefs were for the most part, distinctly pro-Zionist, as were the Palestinian peasantry, who were delighted at the benefits that Jewish immigration was bringing them. The Muslim religious leader, the Mufti, was openly friendly, even taking a prominent part in the ceremony of laying the foundation stone of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The Emir Hussein of the Hejaz replied “with an expression of goodwill towards a kindred Semitic race”, when the Balfour Declaration was communicated to him in 1918, and his son Feisal, acting officially for the Arab movement, wrote on March 3, 1919:

We Arabs look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to the Peace Conference and we regard them as moderate and proper. We will do our best, insofar as we are concerned, to help them through. We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.

There had indeed been many attacks on Jewish settlements by Bedouin long before then, reflecting the age-old clash between agriculturalists and shepherds; and it has been said that not a single settlement was created without some loss of life. Nevertheless, this was a feature of the lawless state of the country, in which Jews were not the only victims.

As late as 1920, three years after the Balfour Declaration, the British government issued a Peace Handbook No. 162 on Zionism for the instruction and information of British officials and representatives throughout the world. It stated unequivocally that Jewish nationalism has been continuous, and refers to the fact that it is “the oldest nationalist movement in history”. No more explicit statement of Jewish aspirations has ever been penned than this official British publication, which is now buried somewhere in the dusty files of Whitehall.http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/issue1/Abelson-1.htm

Palestine’s mixed population – counted as “indigenous.”

“The Athenaeum: Part 1, J. Lection, 1887, Page 469

LITERATURE

Haifa; or, Lift in Modern Palestine. By Laurence Oliphant. (Blackwood & Sons.) In November, 1882, Mr. Laurence Oliphant took up his residence at Haifa, under the shadow of Mount Carmel, and commenced a series of delightful letters to the New York Sun upon Palestine and the domestic life of its people. Thanks to Mr. Dana the letters, which are spread over a period of three years, have been gathered together in a book, and in that form they have now, for the first time we believe, been published in this country.

[…]

Besides the colonies, a large Jewish agricultural college near Jaffa, founded by the Israelite Alliance, has for the last fifteen years been educating Jewish youths in agricultural pursuits; and though at first it entailed a heavy outlay on its promoters, it is now a financial success On the southern slopes of Carmel a thousand acres of pasture and arable land have been purchased by the Central Jewish Colonization Society of Roumania, and here is being tried the interesting experiment of associating Jews and Moslem fellahin in field labour…

Less satisfactory colonists than Germans or Jews are the Circassians who have been settled at several places east of Jordan, and on the coast plain south of Carmel. The site of Csesarea, with its extensive ruins, has been given to Slav Moslems, who have emigrated from Bosnia and Herzegovina since those provinces were handed over to Austria; and near Acre a Persian colony has collected round the successor of the founder of the Bubs, who lives in complete seclusion at a villa on the plain.

“History of Palestine: the last two thousand years,” Jacob De Haas, The Macmillan company, 1934, p. 147 [523 pages]

The real Arab stock in Islam was exceedingly small, for the people found by the First Companion in Palestine and Syria were a melange, “ethnologically a chaos of all the possible human combinations to which, when Palestine became a land of pilgrimage, a new admixture was added.”” The myth, that has influenced Near Eastern policies to this day, that there are countless “sons of the desert,” has no basis in fact. http://books.google.com/books?&id=cTYcAAAAMAAJ&dq=ethnologically[Original source:] p. 150Richard Hartmann, Palastina unter den Arabern, 632-1516, Leipzig, 1915, p. 23http://books.google.com/books?id=9pVPAAAAYAAJ&dq=arabern

A System of geography for the use of schools…, Sidney Edwards Morse, Harper and brothers, 1862, p. 60 [72 pages]

Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, also suffer muel from predatory incursions of the Bedouin Arabs of the bordering deserts… The Bedouin, or wandering Arab, is a singular compound of hospitality and robbery, the stranger who is treated with lavish kindness tn the tent, being robbed and murdered without remorse when met in the open plain. http://books.google.com/books?id=u8j31YOvHBAC&pg=PA60

what less, the cultivated land is succeeded by a desert country, abandoned to the wandering Arabs. Near where this change of aspect begins to present itself, is a place called by the natives El Baid, where there is a fountain in the … http://books.google.com/books?id=WJ1JAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA202

…Arabs is quite incorrect, and this is what is usually done in the case of Palestine.The Arabic-speaking people of Palestine, about 90 per cent of the population, are divided into three categories. There are the Beduin, or mobile tribes, who are the only true Arabs in the country, with the exception of one or two old Arab families who live in the larger towns. There are the ” Fellaheen,” or settled cultivators of the soil, who are probably in part descended from … and are no more akin to Arabs than are the Kaffirs of South Africa to Zulus. Their only similarity is that they speak the same language, Arabic. The Beduin are a pure race, while the fellaheen are mongrels, and a Beduin sheikh would regard his being classed with the fellaheen of Palestine as one of the greatest insults imaginable. Then there are the Syrians, or town-dwellers, who are a mixed race of miscellaneous origin and no origin in particular. They can usually be recognised from the fact that they wear the ” tarboosh… The greater part of the non- Jewish population are Moslems, although there is a good percentage of Christians with smaller proportions of Druses, Metwalis, Baha ‘is and Samaritans. The Moslem community includes a number of Circassians, Magharbeh and Bosnian immigrants as well as the Beduin, Fellaheen and Syrian adherents, while the 1 Such as El Husseini and El Khaldi. http://books.google.com/books?id=BNJAAAAAIAAJ&dq=mobile+tribeshttp://books.google.com/books?id=BNJAAAAAIAAJ&dq=bosnianhttp://books.google.com/books?id=BNJAAAAAIAAJ&dq=zulushttp://books.google.com/books?id=BNJAAAAAIAAJ&dq=town-dwellers

Not only Jewish immigrants, but Arab immigrants had been drawn to Palestine by its new-found prosperity, and the Arabs like the Jews had been drawn from a wide geographic area. The Palestine census of 1931 had shown that many Arabs then resident in Palestine had been born in countries as far away as Morocco, Algeria, Tripoli and Yemen.

This fact had so impressed itself on Churchill that he told the House of Commons during his speech:

So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population. Now we are asked to decree that all this is to stop and all this to come to an end. We are now asked to submit, and this is what rankles most with me, to an agitation which is fed with foreign money and ceaselessly inflamed by Nazi and by Fascist propaganda.

During the course of his speech Churchill drew attention to a factor of the Palestine problem which had been much commented on in Britain during the previous two years : the large Arab as well as Jewish immigration into Palestine since the beginning of the Mandate. The extent of this Arab immigration had been commented on by several Jewish witnesses to the Peel Commission.

[…]
At the end of the nineteenth century, despite the claims of hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees to ancestral rights, the total Arab population of the entire Holy Land was no more than 300,000,24 a number less than half of those who are presently citizens of Israel!

An increase in Arab population began to take place at the beginning of the twentieth century. The influx of Arabs was a direct consequence of the activity of the Zionists who began to settle into and develop the land in the 1880’s. The Jewish pioneers bought up swampy, desolate or desert land and proceeded under horrendous difficulties to restore it to productivity. The increase in the Arab population was directly proportional to the Zionist’s success in their endeavor ” to make the swamps fruitful and the desert bloom.”

New employment opportunities brought Arabs from Syria, Egypt, and even Saudi Arabia all underdeveloped lands. Thus, a major proportion of the 1948 Arab population of Israel is attributable to the backbreaking endeavors of the Zionists.

British government statistics substantiate the dramatic increase of Arab population in the new Jewish areas, an increase in sharp contrast to the relatively static number of Arabs in the non-Jewish areas,

In addition, the population statistics between 1893 and 1948 regarding the Arab presence are deceiving. All non-Jews are registered in one category and Jews in another. Thus Christians, Pagans, and Jews who did not declare their religion are registered as Arab! The Jewish population just prior to World War I nonetheless numbered in the skewed census as 85,000.

Under the British, Arab immigration was encouraged and Jewish immigration curtailed. Only 12,000 entry permits for Jews were allowed. The Jews who had escaped the Nazi death camps were forced to return to the charnal houses because entry permits had to be acquired in advance – evidently the Jews were to apply at the nearest gestapo headquarters! When Jewish leaders begged the British to forego “legal” entry permits and deduct the numbers from the allowable total of 12,000, the requests were denied.

The British did not merely encourage Arab immigration; They imported Arabs from other Arab countries! Clearly a large number of those who now claim “Palestinian” rights in Israel were among these immigrants and most others stem from Arabs who arrived after the Zionists had created a viable economy.http://www.hebrewhistory.org/factpapers/eretz26.html

The problem of Arab immigration has arisen only because of the Jewish development and Jewish immigration into Palestine, which has created room for more people than the number of Jews allowed by the Government to come in.

[…] But their claim, if ever it existed, does not exist any more. The Arabs outside Palestine are organized in a number of states. …On the other hand, the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Palestine, as we shall see later, are not the descendants of the conquerors. But even if they were, they would have lost their alleged rights . For unlike the Jews, the Palestinian Arabs never struggled for their independence…

… But a Palestinian people which could claim this right, does not exist.
The Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Palestine are either Arabs, as they call themselves, or Syrians, as the Syrian Arabs prefer to call them.

There is no other alternative, as Palestine has had no separate political existence since the destruction of the Jewish State, but has ever since formed part of Syria. An independent Arabic Palestine has never existed.

For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated and widely-neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts and malarial marshes. Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in 1867, described it as: “…[a] desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds-a silent mournful expanse….A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action….We never saw a human being on the whole route….There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

As late as 1880, the American consul in Jerusalem reported the area was continuing its historic decline. “The population and wealth of Palestine has not increased during the last forty years,” he said.

The Report of the Palestine Royal Commission quotes an account of the Maritime Plain in 1913:

The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts…no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached [the Jewish village of] Yabna [Yavne]….Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen….The ploughs used were of wood….The yields were very poor….The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist….The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert….The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.

Lewis French, the British Director of Development wrote of Palestine:

We found it inhabited by fellahin who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria….Large areas…were uncultivated….The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. The individual plots…changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin’s lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors, the Bedouin.

Surprisingly, many people who were not sympathetic to the Zionist cause believed the Jews would improve the condition of Palestinian Arabs. For example, Dawood Barakat, editor of the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram, wrote: “It is absolutely necessary that an entente be made between the Zionists and Arabs, because the war of words can only do evil. The Zionists are necessary for the country: The money which they will bring, their knowledge and intelligence, and the industriousness which characterizes them will contribute without doubt to the regeneration of the country.”

Even a leading Arab nationalist believed the return of the Jews to their homeland would help resuscitate the country. According to Sherif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic Holy Places in Arabia:

The resources of the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants. One of the most amazing things until recent times was that the Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering over the high seas in every direction. His native soil could not retain a hold on him, though his ancestors had lived on it for 1000 years. At the same time we have seen the Jews from foreign countries streaming to Palestine from Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain, America. The cause of causes could not escape those who had a gift of deeper insight. They knew that the country was for its original sons (abna’ihi­l­asliyin), for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland. The return of these exiles (jaliya) to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually [to be] an experimental school for their brethren who are with them in the fields, factories, trades and in all things connected with toil and labor.

A Population BoomAs Hussein foresaw, the regeneration of Palestine, and the growth of its population, came only after Jews returned in massive numbers. The Jewish population increased by 470,000 between World War I and World War II while the non-Jewish population rose by 588,000. In fact, the permanent Arab population increased 120 percent between 1922 and 1947.

This rapid growth was a result of several factors. One was immigration from neighboring states — constituting 37 percent of the total immigration to pre-state Israel — by Arabs who wanted to take advantage of the higher standard of living the Jews had made possible. The Arab population also grew because of the improved living conditions created by the Jews as they drained malarial swamps and brought improved sanitation and health care to the region. Thus, for example, the Muslim infant mortality rate fell from 201 per thousand in 1925 to 94 per thousand in 1945 and life expectancy rose from 37 years in 1926 to 49 in 1943.

The Arab population increased the most in cities with large Jewish populations that had created new economic opportunities. From 1922­1947, the non-Jewish population increased 290 percent in Haifa, 131 percent in Jerusalem and 158 percent in Jaffa. The growth in Arab towns was more modest: 42 percent in Nablus, 78 percent in Jenin and 37 percent in Bethlehem.

Jewish Land PurchasesDespite the growth in their population, the Arabs continued to assert they were being displaced. The truth is from the beginning of World War I, part of Palestine’s land was owned by absentee landlords who lived in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut. About 80 percent of the Palestinian Arabs were debt-ridden peasants, semi-nomads and Bedouins.

Jews actually went out of their way to avoid purchasing land in areas where Arabs might be displaced. They sought land that was largely uncultivated, swampy, cheap and, most important, without tenants. In 1920, Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion expressed his concern about the Arab fellahin, whom he viewed as “the most important asset of the native population.” Ben-Gurion said “under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them.” He advocated helping liberate them from their oppressors. “Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement,” Ben-Gurion added, “should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price.”

It was only after the Jews had bought all of this available land that they began to purchase cultivated land. Many Arabs were willing to sell because of the migration to coastal towns and because they needed money to invest in the citrus industry.

When John Hope Simpson arrived in Palestine in May 1930, he observed: “They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay.”

In 1931, Lewis French conducted a survey of landlessness and eventually offered new plots to any Arabs who had been “dispossessed.” British officials received more than 3,000 applications, of which 80 percent were ruled invalid by the Government’s legal adviser because the applicants were not landless Arabs. This left only about 600 landless Arabs, 100 of whom accepted the Government land offer.

In April 1936, a new outbreak of Arab attacks on Jews was instigated by a Syrian guerrilla named Fawzi al-Qawukji, the commander of the Arab Liberation Army. By November, when the British finally sent a new commission headed by Lord Peel to investigate, 89 Jews had been killed and more than 300 wounded.

The Peel Commission’s report found that Arab complaints about Jewish land acquisition were baseless. It pointed out that “much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased….there was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land.” Moreover, the Commission found the shortage was “due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.” The report concluded that the presence of Jews in Palestine, along with the work of the British Administration, had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living and ample employment opportunities.

In his memoirs, Transjordan’s King Abdullah wrote:

It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping (author’s emphasis).

Even at the height of the Arab revolt in 1938, the British High Commissioner to Palestine believed the Arab landowners were complaining about sales to Jews to drive up prices for lands they wished to sell. Many Arab landowners had been so terrorized by Arab rebels they decided to leave Palestine and sell their property to the Jews.

The Jews were paying exorbitant prices to wealthy landowners for small tracts of arid land. “In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semiarid land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre.”

By 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine amounted to about 463,000 acres. Approximately 45,000 of these acres were acquired from the Mandatory Government; 30,000 were bought from various churches and 387,500 were purchased from Arabs. Analyses of land purchases from 1880 to 1948 show that 73 percent of Jewish plots were purchased from large landowners, not poor fellahin. Those who sold land included the mayors of Gaza, Jerusalem and Jaffa. As’ad el­Shuqeiri, a Muslim religious scholar and father of PLO chairman Ahmed Shuqeiri, took Jewish money for his land. Even King Abdullah leased land to the Jews. In fact, many leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, including members of the Muslim Supreme Council, sold land to Jews. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Arabs_in_Palestine.html

Jewish vs. Arab Immigration

During World War I, the Jewish population declined because of the war, famine, disease and expulsion. In 1915, approximately 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine among 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs. According to the 1922 census, the Jewish population was 84,000, while the Arabs numbered 643,000.4 Thus, the Arab population continued to grow exponentially even while that of the Jews stagnated.

In the mid-1920s, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased primarily because of anti-Jewish economic legislation in Poland and Washington’s imposition of restrictive quotas.5

The record number of immigrants in 1935 (see table) was a response to the growing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The British administration considered this number too large, however, so the Jewish Agency was informed that less than one-third of the quota it asked for would be approved in 1936.6

The British gave in further to Arab demands by announcing in the 1939 White Paper that an independent Arab state would be created within 10 years, and that Jewish immigration was to be limited to 75,000 for the next five years, after which it was to cease altogether. It also forbade land sales to Jews in 95 percent of the territory of Palestine. The Arabs, nevertheless, rejected the proposal. […]

By contrast, throughout the Mandatory period, Arab immigration was unrestricted. In 1930, the Hope Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants.7

The British Governor of the Sinai from 1922-36 observed: “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.”8

The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the “shortfall of land is, we consider, due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.”9

Thus Ernst Frankenstein, a German-Jewish jurist who lectured at the Academy of International Law in the Hague, concluded that the Arabs did not have ” continuous and undisturbed possession” of Palestine, thereby undercutting their legal claim.Moreover, he insisted that most of the inhabitants of Palestine were not the descendants of its original indigenous population, but rather many were immigrants themselves. It was true that between the Crusades and the Mongol invasions, large parts of Palestine, and especially Jerusalem, had been depopulated. The total population of Jerusalem in the mid- nineteenth century was about the same as in the mid-sixteenth century— 14000 to 15000 residents—and that was after it had been reduced even further during the period of the Mamluks. The Arabic-speaking populations had been somewhat replenished in the rest of Palestine by the constant stream of Bedouin and neighboring immigrants from Egypt and Syria in recent centuries, and especially with the rise of the Jewish national home. The issue of Arab immigration into Palestine, which was raised by those advancing the cause for Jewish national rights, may have been controversial with many British authorities but it nonetheless made an impact in 1939 on President Delano Roosevelt, who concluded, “Arab immigration into Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded the total Jewish immigration during the whole period.”http://books.google.com/books?id=sLZDIk4GUDsC&pg=PA128

“In defence of the realm: the place of nations in classical liberalism,” p. 177, David Conway, 2004, 210 pages

In any case, the vast majority of Jews living in Palestine in 1947 had entered that territory lawfully. This is, perhaps, more than can be said for the Arab population in Palestine which, after 1920, grew there at such a rate as could not possibly have come about otherwise than through substantial illegal Arab immigration… http://books.google.com/books?id=oX3ub013g9MC&pg=PA177

There is widespread confusion as to the actual number of Palestine Arab refugees. …It must also be considered that about 100000 Arabs from the Lebanon, Egypt, Syrian Hauran and Sudan illegally settled in Palestine in the days of the British Mandate. Some 75000 of these joined the exodus and swelled the number of refugees accordingly.

The Zionist movement demanded the right of self-determination and sovereignty in the land of Israel. In 1882, Zionist Jewish immigration to Palestine began. At this time, the land in question was governed by the Muslim Turkish Ottoman Empire. By the time World War I began in 1914, the population of Jews in Palestine was between 60,000 and 85,000. while the non-Jews (mostly Arabs) numbered 683,000. Initially, most Arab landowners welcomed Jewish settlers, actively wishing to profit on the purchase of land. Many poor Arabs benefited from the modern economy built by the immigrants, and Arab immigrants flocked from neighboring countries… The British helped set up several independent Arab states after World War I, including Iraq, Transjordan, and Saudi Arabia, but the Arabs believed Britain had promised them Palestine as part of Syria, as well, and were angry about the … http://books.google.com/books?id=Z2cCZBDm8F8C&pg=PA25

“Midstream,” 1970, p. 9

Not only the local Arabs prospered because of the better sanitary and economic conditions created by Jewish labor. After the Balfour Declaration Palestine changed from a country of Arab emigration to one of Arab immigration. Arabs from the Hauran in Syria as well as other neighboring lands poured into Palestine to profit from the higher standard of living and fresh opportunities provided by the Zionist development. All reports agree that prior to the Jewishhttp://books.google.com/books?id=qX_VAAAAMAAJ&dq=emigration(“People and Politics in the Middle East,” p. 103, Michael Curtis, 1971http://books.google.com/books?id=1zxOruujp_IC&pg=PA103)

The opposition of Palestine Arabs, and later of Arab nationalists generally, to Zionist settlement was by no means unknown either to the Jews or to the British, and the opposition grew. So did the Arab population. Under the British Mandate in the twenties and thirties, Zionist know-how and capital raised the standard of living to such a degree that Palestine attracted an unprecedented influx of Arabs, paralleling the more organized immigration of Jews.[…] The Zionists tended to see the problem of Arab opposition in political-economic terms. As the standard of living of the Arab population rose, it was believed, objections to Jewish immigration would diminish. Arab immigration into Palestine of Syrians (Hauranis), Egyptians, Sudanese, and Bedouins seemed to prove that the Zionist project was beneficial to the Arab people. http://books.google.com/books?&id=ZQEiAQAAIAAJ&dq=immigrationhttp://books.google.com/books?&id=ZQEiAQAAIAAJ&dq=hauranis

Palestine – The Peace FAQ
Sep 1, 1998

Question:

Was Palestine full of Arabs before the mass return of Jews?

Answer:

“[The Holy Land was] desolate country whose soil is rich enough,
but is given over wholly to weeds – a silent mournful expanse…A
desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of
life and action…We never saw a human being on the whole route…There
was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus,
those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country”

– Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim’s Progress (1869).

The area was underpopulated and remained economically
stagnant until the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers in the 1880’s,
who came to rebuild the Jewish land. The country had remained “The Holy
Land” in the religious and historic consciousness of mankind, which
associated it with the Bible and the history of the Jewish people.
Jewish development of the country also attracted large numbers of other
immigrants – both Jewish and Arab.

“The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer
track suitable for transport by camels and carts…Houses were all of
mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen…The plows used were of
wood…The yields were very poor…The sanitary conditions in the
village [Yabna] were horrible…Schools did not exist…The rate of
infant mortality was very high…The western part, toward the sea, was
almost a desert…The villages in this area were few and thinly
populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as
owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by
their inhabitants.”

– The report of the British Royal Commission, 1913

“We found it inhabited by fellahin who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria…Large areas…were uncultivated….The fellahin,
if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and
other criminals. The individual plots…changed hands annually. There
was little public security, and the fellahin’s lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors, the Bedouin.”

– Lewis French, the British Director of Development

“There are many proofs, such as ancient ruins, broken
aqueducts, and remains of old roads, which show that it has not always
been so desolate as it seems now. In the portion of the plain between
Mount Carmel and Jaffa one sees but rarely a village or other sights of
human life.

“There are some rude mills here which are turned by the stream. A ride
of half an hour more brought us to the ruins of the ancient city of
C?sarea, once a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, and the Roman
capital of Palestine, but now entirely deserted.

“As the sun was setting we gazed upon the desolate harbor, once filled
with ships, and looked over the sea in vain for a single sail. In this
once crowded mart, filled with the din of traffic, there was the
silence of the desert. After our dinner we gathered in our tent as
usual to talk over the incidents of the day, or the history of the
locality.

“Yet it was sad, as I laid upon my couch at night, to listen to the
moaning of the waves and to think of the desolation around us.”

– by B. W. Johnson, in Young Folks in Bible Lands: Chapter IV, 1892

“Then we entered the hill district, and our path lay
through the clattering bed of an ancient stream, whose brawling waters
have rolled away into the past, along with the fierce and turbulent
race who once inhabited these savage hills. There may have been
cultivation here two thousand years ago.

“The mountains, or huge stony mounds environing this rough path, have
level ridges all the way up to their summits; on these parallel ledges
there is still some verdure and soil: when water flowed here, and the
country was thronged with that extraordinary population, which,
according to the Sacred Histories, was crowded into the region, these
mountain steps may have been gardens and vineyards, such as we see now
thriving along the hills of the Rhine.

“Now the district is quite deserted, and you ride among what seem to be
so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony
brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the
ride.”

– by William Thackeray in From Jaffa To Jerusalem, 1844

So when the Arabs speak of an historical “Palestinian people,” this is a lie and they know it! The Land of Israel was virtually uninhabited when the Jews began their return [“Zionist Movement”] in the late 1800’s. The vast majority of Arabs came to Israel after these Zionist pioneers began to rebuild the land and thereby creating the economic opportunities and medical availabilities which attracted Arabs from both surrounding territories and far-away Arab lands!

Terrorism, slaughter, rape and carnage by the Arabs
against the Jews began as soon as the Jews began to resettle the barren
land and largely uninhabited lands, continued through the British
Mandatory period after World War I, continued again after the Jews
declared a Jewish Palestinian home [Israel] in 1948 and is still
continuing today.

The Palestinian claim that the Land for centuries sustained a thriving Palestinian culture is not authorized by the facts of history. Yet the world community has given this claim a receptive
hearing. PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat in his speech before the UN in 1974
declared, “The Jewish invasion began in 1881…Palestine was then a
verdant area, inhabited mainly by an Arab people in the course of
building its life and dynamically enriching its indigenous culture.”

What happens when this claim is compared with the personal observations
of the following recognized authorities? In 1738 Thomas Shaw observed a
land of “barrenness…from want of inhabitants.” In 1785 Constantine
Francois de Volney recorded the population of the three main cities.
Jerusalem had a population of 12,000 to 14,000. Bethlehem had about 600
able-bodied men. Hebron had 800 to 900 men. In 1835 Alphonse de
Lamartine wrote, “Outside the city of Jerusalem, we saw no living
object, heard no living sound…a complete eternal silence reigns in
the town, in the highways, in the country…The tomb of a whole
people.”

In 1857, the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, reported, “The
country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore
its greatest need is that of a body of population.”

The most popular quote on the desolation of the Land is from Mark
Twain’s The Innocents Abroad (1867), “Palestine sits in sackcloth and
ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields
and fettered its energies…Palestine is desolate and unlovely…It is
a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land.”

…The records of history simply do not confirm today’s Palestinian
claim of Palestinian roots and culture in a “verdant area” since the
Arab rule of the land (A.D. 640-1099).

of the Jewish People to a
Sovereign State in their Historic Homeland – Dore Gold and Jeff Helmreich […] By 1864, a clear-cut Jewish majority emerged in Jerusalem – more than half a century before the arrival of the British Empire and the League of Nations Mandate. During the years that the Jewish presence in Eretz Israel was restored, a huge Arab population influx transpired as Arab immigrants sought to take advantage of higher wages and economic opportunities that resulted from Jewish settlement in the land. President Roosevelt concluded in 1939 that “Arab immigration into Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded the total Jewish immigration during the whole period.” http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp507.htm

Throughout the period of British rule in Palestine, there was a considerable amount of Arab immigration, most of which was never properly recorded. …Many of the Arabs who had come to find work in Palestine had initially done so as temporary and seasonal migrant labour. Thus, for instance, the term “Hawranis” (people coming from the Hawran area in Syria) became [p. 70] synonymous for unskilled labourers. The Hawranis were, in fact, Druze. Many of the newcomers settled in Western Galilee and on Mount Carmel, were smaller Druze communities had existed before. Others, mainly Bedouins, came from Egypt and Jordan. Most of this type of migration over Palestine’s land borders was never officially recorded by the immigration officers.

Taking into account the various rates of net natural population increase as they were reported by Government of Palestine statisticians, we arrive for 1945 at an unaccounted for addition, since 1920, of 126,000 persons for the Arab sector. Apart from mistakes and inaccuracies in the official vital statistics, which probably cancelled out, the increase can be due only to immigration. Because the figure of 120000 also includes the children of these Arab immigrants, the net immigration figures were smaller than this sum. When Palestine became an important Allied base during World War II, Arab immigration increased. However, a large part of the net increase of the population due to Arab migration occurred prior to 1940.

The almost continuous Arab immigration into Palestine, following the establishment of the Mandate, contradicted the political argument regarding the displacement of the native population by the Zionist settlers. What in fact occurred was a limited, and at times indirect, effect of the Jewish development effort on the Arab population. In this respect, the very low standards of living in the areas from which Arabs flocked into Palestine provided the necessary push factor. The dominant pull factor was the availability of work, and not the increase of the Palestinian standard of living which was, at the most, rather marginal. Indirectly, this type of immigration, even if it was of an only temporary nature, had a beneficial influence on the existing Arab population …

Arab immigration also proves the point that the isolation between the two communities was not an absolute one. At least in part, the conditions leading to leading to this influx had been created by the Jews. However, isolation had become an important though not always directly expressed tenet of some Zionists. Rather absurdly, Arab political representatives actively [page 71] assisted these Zionists. They harbored the mistaken idea that the Jewish community depended upon them to a decisive degree. It was this theory which formed the background for the decision to protest against the threat of the Jews achieving a majority with an economic boycott. http://books.google.com/books?id=wKuU3ZBS7gEC&pg=PA69

(p. 34) Thus during the ten-year period from 1935 to 1945 more than 20,000 Arab immigrants of the legal and illegal variety came into (p. 35) the country. Since the massive illegal Arab immigration took place during the 1931-1935 period, it would be excessive to double the annual average for that four-year period. Illegal Arab immigration continued after 1945, so the total figure for Arab mmigration for the years 1931 to 1947 would be between 35,000 and 40,000. It would be emphasized that these figures include the illegal immigration for which there is documented information… there were many immigrants who escaped the eyes of the authorities.. http://books.google.com/books?id=8Teb4dKHQcoC&pg=PA34

“Communism and Zionism in Palestine: the Comintern and the political unrest in the 1920’s,” Jacob Hen-Tov, Transaction Publishers: 1974, [ISBN 0870733265, 9780870733260] p. 14

Arab Immigration into Pre-State Israel: 1922-1931 By Fred M. Gottheil…but it is important also to note that there has been large-scale Arab emigration from the surrounding countries. Underscoring the point, C. S. Jarvis, Governor of the Sinai from 1923-1936, noted: “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Tarns-Jordan and Syria and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining States could not be kept from going in to share that misery.Even the Simpson Report acknowledged Arab immigration in this form : Another serious feature of immigration is the number of persons who evade the frontier control and enter Palestine without formality of any kind. … http://books.google.com/books?id=w9uhNmefCIgC&pg=PA255

A history of Israel: from the rise of Zionism to our time, by Howard Morley Sachar, Knopf, 2007 – History p. 167

It was not all natural increase. During those twenty-four years [1922-1946] approximately 100,000 Arabs entered the country from neighboring lands. The influx could be traced in some measure to the orderly government provided by the British; but far more, certainly, to the economic opportunities made possible by Jewish settlement… by opening new markets for Arab produce and new employment opportunities for Arab labor.http://books.google.com/books?id=OJftAAAAMAAJ&dq=influx

Israel and the Arab world – Aharon Cohen – [Funk & Wagnalls] 1970 – 576 pages – [Pages 223-224][p. 223]During a period of approximately twenty-five years the population of Palestine* grew at a rate unprecedented in the world. From 1870 to 1890, the period of most intensive growth. the population of the United States rose from thirty-eight million to sixty-eight million, or an increase of 58 per-cent in twenty years. The total population of Palestine grew from 649000 in 1922 (according to the 1922 census) to 1845600 in 1946 (according to official government figures) — a rate of 184 percent in twenty-four years ! [p. 224]According to the official statistics, the Arab population of Palestine increased by 118 percent during the twenty-four years between 1922 and 1946 — a growth of almost 5 percent per annum. When, however, it is remembered that during this period some 100000 Arabs entered the country from neighboring lands (the government’s estimate of a few tens of thousands was certainly an underestimate…http://books.google.com/books?id=pwm7AAAAIAAJ&q=100%2C000http://books.google.com/books?id=pwm7AAAAIAAJ&q=1922

Between 1922 and 1939, the Arab population increased by more than 75 percent, through immigration. Between 1880 and 1948, 73 percent of the land purchased by the Zionists came from large absentee landlords, and as an investigating British commission reported: “Much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased.”

The diligently cultivated scenario is in place. The black and white hats have been put in their proper places. It runs something like this:

The Palestinians, a homogenous and prosperous culture onto themselves, were brutally expelled from their homeland as an integral part of the master plan of the West; partly to assuage guilt for the Holocaust, partly to maintain control of a strategic oil rich region.

After the expulsion, the rationale goes, the remnants of the Palestinians were treated like second class citizens in their own land, powerless to protect their rights from the oppressor, who stole their property and, through various machinations, usurped their birthright.

The epic continues. As a result of the manifest injustices done they formed the Palestine liberation Organization [PLO], a democratic, secular, popular movement dedicated to restoring Palestine. Said restoration would result in a secular, democratic state, where all citizens would have equal political and religious rights. For the West, this so-called Palestinian question was not a major source of international concern until the 1974 Arab oil embargo.

But a lie is still a lie.

Lie No. 1: The Palestinians were a sovereign people and nation until they were “expelled” in 1948.

Facts: The area known as Palestine was a province of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th Century until the British took control in 1917. From 1917 until 1948, the area was under British operational control and, later, mandate.

There was never a Palestinian nation.

Further, the population of the entire area, according to a 1879 Encyclopedia Britannica, was never substantial and was ethnically diverse. Any inhabitants there were concentrated in two cities, Jerusalem and Jaffa, and in the nomadic Bedouin tribes.

There was also a constant Jewish community. From the time of the first census in 1844 to the present, there have always been more Jews in Jerusalem than Moslems. Large-scale Jewish immigration during the Ottoman period made the Jewish community. From the time of the first census in 1844 to the present, there have always been more Jews in Jerusalem than Moslems. Large scale Jewish immigration during the Ottoman period made the Jewish community a significant presence.

It was only after the Jewish settlers bought land and made the area economically productive that the Arabs returned in significant numbers. Between the World Wars, the Arab population in predominantly Arab towns rose only insignificantly, e.g. 16,000 to 23,000 in Nablus. The population trends in the three major Jewish cities show a different story. The Arab population increased in Jerusalem by 97 percent, from 28,500 to 56,400, in Jaffa by 134 percent, from 27,400 to 62,600 and in Haifa by 216 percent, from 18,400 to 58,200.

The massive Arab immigration into Palestine during the Mandate period accounts for roughly 75 percent of the supposedly “Palestinian” population present at the time of the partition in 1948.

Lie No2: Israel occupies historical Palestine.

Facts: Israel only covers roughly 25 percent of what used to be the province of Palestine. In 1922, the British government violated its League of Nations Mandate over Palestine by partitioning the territory into a truncated Palestine and a nebulous entity called “Transjordan.”

In 1947, the United Nations voted to form two states out of what was left of Palestine, and the Jewish leadership pledged to abide by the borders. The Arab world refused and invaded.

As the world knows, Israel won its war and the ensuing armistice lines resulted in Israeli sovereignty over 20 percent of the land within the 1917 borders of Palestine. The remainder, the so-called West Bank, was grabbed by the Bedouin King Abdullah. For 19 years, he and his successor and grandson, Hussein, controlled the territory; at any time during that period either could have returned this so-called birthright to the Palestinians. They did not, and since none of the other Arab countries would grant full refuge to the refugees, they were dumped into policed camps.

Meanwhile, Jordan (the name was changed In 1950 is more than 75 percent Palestinian in population. Palestinians are prospering in that nation-in-an area comprising most of historical Palestine.

Lie No. 3: The PLO is a freedom-seeking, democratic organization.

Fact: Anyone who witnessed the tragedy of Lebanon from 1975 through last summer’s invasion by Israeli forces saw the true face of the PLO. At best, it is a shadow organization in chaos.

The Lebanese gave refuge to the Palestinians and the PLO, and in “gratitude,” the PLO established a state within Lebanon, mocking its sovereignty, murdering its citizens and slashing its social fabric.

The Lebanese have suffered enough from PLO democracy and freedom. They consider themselves somewhat lucky-a few more years of PLO freedom and guarantees and Lebanon might not have survived.

An American wit once said, “Trust everyone, but cut the cards yourself.” Through all of the lies, the truth is coming out, and right will triumph.

By Sister Margaret Ellen Traxler:- is director of the Institute of Women Today and founder and a member of the board of the National Coalition of American Nuns, both based in Chicago.

In the early 19th century, Palestine was a backward, neglected province of the Ottoman Empire. Travelers to Palestine from the Western world left records of what they saw there. The theme throughout their reports is dismal: The land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins.

In Jerusalem, all reports and journals of travelers, pilgrims and government representatives during these years, repeatedly record the poverty, filth and neglect and the desolate nature of the countryside.Early photographs show lepers in rags and dilapidated buildings. Jerusalem was surrounded by marauding bands of Bedouin Arabs and had to close her gates at nightfall and reopen them at first light, a practice that was similar in Biblical times.

Some quotes from the writings of these visitors before modern times:

Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. [English pilgrim in 1590]

The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population. [British consul in 1857]

There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] — not for 30 miles in either direction… One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. … For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee … Nazareth is forlorn … Jericho lies a moldering ruin … Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation… untenanted by any living creature… A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds … a silent, mournful expanse … a desolation … We never saw a human being on the whole route … Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere.Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country … Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery Palestine must be the prince. The hills barren and dull, the valleys unsightly deserts [inhabited by] swarms of beggars with ghastly sores and malformations. Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes … desolate and unlovely … [Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867] http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_early_palestine_zionists_impact.php

The Jews’ troubles with the Arabs started, Peters explains, with Mohammed himself, who had hoped to convert the Jews of the Arabian peninsula, a group with thousand-year-old roots in that region, to his new religion. His efforts having been spurned, he turned against the Jews; whole Jewish tribes were exterminated… In 633 the Arab conquest of Palestine began, and the area, whose population was predominantly Jewish and Christian, was ruled from Damascus by the Omayyad caliphate until 750. Thereafter both the conquerors and the population changed… Islam was the dominant religion until the Crusader conquests, and was again after those conquests, but many of the rulers themselves were non- Arabs or of mixed ethnic stock — especially Turkish after the fifteenth century — and each… By the late sixteenth century, according to the reports of travelers, the land was severely depopulated, a condition that seems to have worsened in succeeding centuries. Three hundred years later Palestine was largely a ruin, with many of its towns abandoned; Jerusalem itself had only 15000 inhabitants, half of them Jews. A land that had sustained several million Jews two millennia before had a total… in which she tries to show that Palestine, having become largely depopulated by the mid-nineteenth century, thereafter experienced a population growth that consisted of Jewish immigrants, who began to develop parts of the land, http://books.google.com/books?id=vuomAQAAIAAJ&dq=conquestshttp://books.google.com/books?id=vuomAQAAIAAJ&q=depopulated

Who are the Palestinians and who is occupying what?[…]The word plesheth meant migratory referring to the migration of the Philistines into the sea coast of Israel. So the Palestinians of 3000 years ago were, in fact, the Philistines. The Philistines were not native to Israel, in fact, as their name implies, they came from somewhere else. Most scholars agree that they came from the Greek Islands, most likely Crete. Obviously, they did not speak Arabic and they were not Semitic like the Jews and Arabs. The Arabs came from guess where?–Arabia. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/site/comments/who-are-the-palestinians-and-who-is-occupying-what/

The Canaanites disappeared from the face of the earth three millennia ago…Even the Palestinians themselves have acknowledged their association with the region came long after the Jews… Over the last 2,000 years, there have been massive invasions that killed off most of the local people (e.g., the Crusades), migrations, the plague, and other manmade or natural disasters. The entire local population was replaced many times over. During the British mandate alone, more than 100,000 Arabs emigrated from neighboring countries and are today considered Palestinians.

By contrast, no serious historian questions the more than 3,000-year-old Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, or the modern Jewish people’s relation to the ancient Hebrews.

“…[the Palestinian Arabs’] basic sense of corporate historic identity was, at different levels, Muslim or Arab or – for some – Syrian; it is significant that even by the end of the Mandate in 1948, after thirty years of separate Palestinian political existence, there were virtually no books in Arabic on the history of Palestine..”http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf1.html

Palestinians – Entity Defined by its Opposition to Zionism By: Eli E. Hertz […]There is no age-old Palestinian people. Most so-called Palestinians are relative newcomers to the Land of Israel Like a mantra, Arabs repeatedly claim that…

IN A NUTSHELL

So-called ‘Palestinians’ are newcomers to Palestine. Most are generic Arabs who migrated to British Mandate Palestine from surrounding Arab countries to take advantage of the relative prosperity brought about by the Zionist Movement and the British Mandate.

Palestine is a geographical area, not a nation. Before the establishment of Israel, members of two national entities – Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs – inhabited Mandate Palestine.

A Palestinian people was artificially created in the 1960s by the PLO after the Six-Day War to rob Jews of their homeland and historical identity, and to paint them as victimizers and trespassers. The objective is to lay the groundwork for creating another Arab state at the expense of the Jews – whom Arabs consider an alien and illegitimate political entity in the Middle East.

Crossovers: anti-zionism & anti-semitism – Page 8Shlomo Sharan, David Bukay – [Transaction Publishers,] 2010 – 190 pages – Google eBook – PreviewHistorically, “Palestine” was never a territorial-cultural and political unit, nor were the so-called “Palestinians.” There never was a people or a nation in history by that name. Retaining the Roman name the English named the Land of Israel “Palestine” in English, ” Filastin” in Arabic, and “Palestina (EI)” in Hebrew.. They just as well could have chosen the name “The Holy Land” or some other name.http://books.google.com/books?id=yvMYaP1WLj0C&pg=PA8

“PALESTINE” – Never an Arab Country[…]there was no geopolitical entity called “Palestine,” no Arab nation ever set historical roots on this soil and no national claim was ever made to the territory by any national group other than the Jews.[…]Under the Mandate, the Jewish population continued to grow but while their immigration was progressively restricted, that of Moslems from the surrounding countries (Syria and Jordan) was completely free. As a result, attracted by the Jewish development of the country, the Moslem population increased rapidly and had attained majority by 1947. Palestinian Arabs Never a Nation“Palestinian” Arab nationalism today is a product of recent political and religious currents. Until the 1920’s no such national community had even existed in “Palestine.” This is why both the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate charged the Jews of the National Home with guaranteeing the civil and religious rights of other inhabitants. No mention was made of other national rights of other inhabitants, as it was recognized that the only national claim to the area was that made by the Jews. http://christianactionforisrael.org/never_arab.html

In this essay I would like to present the true origin and identity of the Arab people commonly known as “Palestinians”, and the widespread myths surrounding them. This research is intended to be completely neutral and objective, based on historic and archaeological evidences as well as other documents, including Arab sources, and quoting statements by authoritative Islamic personalities.There are some modern myths -or more exactly, lies- that we can hear everyday through the mass-media as if they were true, of course, hiding the actual truth. For example, whenever the Temple Mount or Jerusalem are mentioned, it is usually remarked that is “the third holy place for muslims”, but why it is never said that is the FIRST Holy Place for Jews? It sounds like an utterly biased information!

In order to make this essay better comprehensible, it will be presented in two units: ·1) Myths and facts concerning the origin and identity of the so-called Palestinians; ·2) Myths and facts regarding Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.

I – Origin and identity of the so-called Palestinians Palestinians are the newest of all the peoples on the face of the Earth, and began to exist in a single day by a kind of supernatural phenomenon that is unique in the whole history of mankind, as it is witnessed by Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist that acknowledged the lie he was fighting for and the truth he was fighting against: “Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?” “We did not particularly mind Jordanian rule. The teaching of the destruction of Israel was a definite part of the curriculum, but we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians – they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag”. “When I finally realized the lies and myths I was taught, it is my duty as a righteous person to speak out”.This declaration by a true “Palestinian” should have some significance for a sincerely neutral observer. Indeed, there is no such a thing like a Palestinian people, or a Palestinian culture, or a Palestinian language, or a Palestinian history. There has never been any Palestinian state, neither any Palestinian archaeological find nor coinage. The present-day “Palestinians” are an Arab people, with Arab culture, Arabic language and Arab history. They have their own Arab states from where they came into the Land of Israel about one century ago to contrast the Jewish immigration. That is the historical truth.They were Jordanians (another recent British invention, as there has never been any people known as “Jordanians”), and after the Six-Day War in which Israel utterly defeated the coalition of nine Arab states and took legitimate possession of Judea and Samaria, the Arab dwellers in those regions underwent a kind of anthropological miracle and discovered that they were Palestinians – something they did not know the day before. Of course, these people having a new identity had to build themselves a history, namely, had to steal some others’ history, and the only way that the victims of the theft would not complain is if those victims do no longer exist. Therefore, the Palestinian leaders claimed two contradictory lineages from ancient peoples that inhabited in the Land of Israel: the Canaanites and the Philistines. Let us consider both of them before going on with the Palestinian issue.

[…] History of Palestine and Palestinians

The fact is, that recent Arab immigration into Palestine. “displaced” the Jews. That the massive increase in Arab population was very recent is attested by the ruling of the United Nations: That any Arab who had lived in…http://www.imninalu.net/myths-pals.htm

The Myth Of The Palestinian People – The answer is that the myth of the Palestinian People serves as the justification for Arab occupation of the Land of Israel. While the Arabs already possess 21 sovereign countries of their own (more than any other single people on earth) and control a land mass 800 times the size of the Land of Israel, this is apparently not enough for them. They therefore feel the need to rob the Jews of their one and only country, one of the smallest on the planet. Unfortunately, many people ignorant of the history of the region, including much of the world media, are only too willing to help. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=747

On a visit to the Ottoman-controlled Holy Land in 1860, Mark Twain described it as “the prince of desolation.” “The hills are barren… the valleys unsightly deserts… peopled by swarms of beggars struck with ghastly sores and malformations… Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes… only the music of angels could charm its shrubs and flowers again into life.”

Other writers and artists visiting the Holy Land (chiefly from Britain and Germany) — as well as geographers, archeologists, and cartographers — were equally stunned by its utter desolation.

It was only toward the end of the 18th century, when a growing stream of Jewish immigrants rehabilitated the land — draining swamps, reclaiming deserts, and controlling the diseases (chiefly malaria) — that a decimated Arab population began increasing. The resuscitation of the land by the Jews and the economic opportunity they created brought an influx of Arab immigrants from dirt-poor neighboring Arab states to swell the number of Arabs in Palestine, so that by the turn of the century there were about 250,000 Arab Muslims and 150,00 Jews living there. 100,000 Christians and others

It was in fact British colonial machinations that turned initial Arab acceptance of a Jewish homeland in British-protected Palestine into unmitigated and disastrous hostility. British behavior in the Middle East in general, and in Palestine in particular, was common colonial practice: divide and rule. In India, it enabled the British to subdue the subcontinent with few troops by pitting hostile segments of the indigenous population against each other. They employed this strategy in Palestine too.

From the very first days of the mandate, a group of very influential British officials in the Colonial and the War Offices, who wanted to maintain control over the land and to prevent the establishment of an independent Jewish national home, started undermining their government’s efforts to fulfill its obligation toward the Jews. These British officials, many of them avowed anti-Semites, fanned Arab resentment over broken British promises to make the Arabian chieftain, Faisal, king of Damascus and Syria, and redirected it against Jewish aspirations in Palestine.

Indeed, their naming the mandate over the Holy Land “Palestine,” rather than the land of Israel, was a deliberate effort to obliterate the Jewish connection to the land by calling it by its Roman name. They also, in 1923, unilaterally removed from the original mandatory area all the land east of the Jordan River-75 percent of the territory promised to the Jews — and gave it to the Emir Abdullah of Arabia, Faisal’s brother, in compensation to the Hashemite family for other broken promises. They did so despite objections from the League of Nations. The small area that had been designated as a home for the Jews was thus reduced to a mere sliver.

A distinct Palestinian Arab nationalism evolved only after the dream of an Arab Syrian kingdom — the brainchild of T. E. Lawrence — was shattered when the French evicted his protégé, the Emir Faisal, from Damascus in 1920. Only then did the South Syrian Arabs living under Britain’s Palestine mandate separate themselves from Syria and start defining themselves as Palestinians. The process was accelerated by their growing negative reaction to the League of Nations’ designation of Palestine as a Jewish national home.

The British helped make hostility to Zionism the defining issue of local Arab politics, and assisted in its exploitation as a lethal weapon in bloody Arab inter-clan struggles for dominance. Muslim clerics and Arab effendis exploited hostility against the Jews, always convenient scapegoats, to deflect the rage of their destitute, exploited people.

The British appointed an extremely radical upstart politician, Hajj Amin al-Hussieni, with a record of violence and incitement, as chief mufti of Jerusalem. They gave him the authority of a spiritual leader to the Arabs, and control of the considerable funds and properties managed by Muslim religious trusts. The mufti promptly proceeded to exploit these resources for his nefarious campaign against the Jews and against his Arab opponents — much as Arafat…http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-doron081402.asp

The Arab and Jewish Refugee Issue In the period before the War of Independence many Israeli Arabs were originally refugees who settled in Israel after fleeing from neighboring Arab countries

Before we explain the 1948 refugee problem, it is important that you are aware of the following basic fact: many Israeli Arabs, who settled in Israel before the War of Independence, were refugees fleeing from neighboring Arab countries:

1. Jewish immigration triggered economic development as the sudden arrival of uprecedented fiscal and human capital created demand for more infastrucutre and agricultural development of previously fallow lands. This increase in demand for manpower brought waves of Arab immigration to Israel.

2. Between 1831-1840 thousands of Egyptians who refused to serve in the Egyptian military fled to Acre in Northern Israel where they settled. Thousands of Egyptian and Sudanese immigrants followed and settled in Gaza, Tulkarem and the Hula Valley in the following decades.

3. British geographer Henry Baker Tristram, in his book The Land of Israel – a Journal of Travels in Palestine from 1865, and the British Palestine Exploration Fund, documented large concentrations of Egyptian immigrants in Jaffa (e.g. in Abu Kabir), Acre, Hadera, Sheikh Munis (near Tel Aviv), Beit Dagan, Zarnuga/Kiryat Moshe, Al-Qubeibeh, Nahal Iron (Wadi Ara), Beit She’an and more. Swiss geographer, Philip Baldensperger (The Immovable East: Studies of the People and Customs of Palestine) documented immigrants from 25 Muslim countries in Jaffa, and immigrants from Morocco and Syria in Ramla.

4. 30,000-36,000 Syrian immigrants arrived in Palestine during a few months in 1934 (according to the Syrian daily paper La Syrie, August 12th 1934, citing the Mandates Commission, el-Haurani).
5. The British geographer Masterman, wrote in 1914 that half the Muslims in Safed were Algerian and the rest were immigrants from Syria and Bedouins from the Jordan Rift Valley. British geographer Claude Conder reported in 1878 that the Jezreel Valley was a sanctuary for Bedouins from Jordan.
6. Arab immigrants from Libya settled in the region of Gedera. Muslim refugees from Algeria (Maghrebi/Moroccan) arrived at Safed and Tiberias in 1856 after the French occupation in 1830.

7. The Ottoman regime and the British mandate encouraged immigration from Arab countries for the purpose of building infrastructure (e.g. the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway in 1892), building military bases, working in quarries, building the Haifa port and drying up swamp land. The British mandate encouraged immigration of foreign workers from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon but limited Jewish immigration.

The verbal Jihad legitimizes all means of demagogical rhetoric, spiced with shameless deception, just as the military Jihad legitimizes all forms of atrocious terrorism to undermine the existence of Israel. In both pursuits, the intent is to advance the “holy” cause of denying the Jewish heritage. Pursuing the “glorious” tradition of verbal Jihad, some fervent advocates of the Palestinian cause contract 4,000 years of the unique Jewish bond with the Land of Israel to merely 500 hundred years of past Jewish kingdoms.

The continuity of Jewish predominance within the Land of Israel was interrupted only by the Islamic conquest. The Islamic occupation successfully accomplished ethnic cleansing of the Jewish community through displacement, expropriation and forced inundation of the Land of Israel by Arab immigrants (a proven historical fact). All historical, scientific and non-Jihadic findings attest to the predominant Jewish existence in the Land of Israel over 2,500 years (since Abraham up to the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Islamic occupation). […]

Assaf Wohl reminds Arab Knesset members who the real immigrants in Israel are

Assaf Wohl Published: 01.06.10, 00:02

[…]Just before he left, Zahalka called Margalit “an immigrant.” This comes on top of Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi’s statement that the Jews are immigrants,..

It is noteworthy that both Zahalka and Tibi have a Ph.D. Yet whatever their areas of specialty are, history of the Land of Israel is certainly not one of them. Two such intelligent people are unaware of the basic history of the country where they reside. After all, Kfar Qara, where Dr. Zahalka resides, was only established in the 18th Century under the auspices of the Arab occupation of Eretz Yisrael. Meanwhile, Arabs only arrived at Taibe, where Dr. Tibi hails from, in the 17th Century from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as attested to by the last names of some residents.

Do they truly believe that the “Palestinians” nobody heard of until the 20th Century, truly grew from the land? Don’t they know that under Arab villages in the Galilee one can find synagogues from the Second Temple period? Don’t they know that by the end of the 19th Century, only about 140,000 non-Jews resided in the Land of Israel, while by 1948 this number grew tenfold, mostly because of Arab immigration to Eretz Yisrael?

“This neighborhood used to be Sheikh Munis,” Zahalka yelled before leaving the Tel Aviv studio, thereby revealing the truth. As it turns out, the appetite of Zahalka and his voters is not confined to the territories. Yet the village of Sheikh Munis, where Tel Aviv University is located today, was only established in the 19th Century, when the Land of Israel was being conquered by Ibrahim Pasha. This took place about 2,500 years after the Shiloh inscription was written in Jerusalem, using the same Hebrew I use to write my column.
Please read the words of Pharaoh Merneptah, who noted the existence of Israelites in Canaan about 3,225 years ago..

THE MYTH OF JEWISH COLONIALISM – IT’S TIME THE WORLD STOPPED SEEING MIDEAST CONFLICT THROUGH DISTORTED EUROCENTRIC LENS 14 December 2009 …The notion of ‘occupation’ and the use of the word ‘settlers’ reinforce the concept of Israeli ‘colonisation’ of ‘Arab’ land. Aside from assuming that the Palestinians must be the true natives because they look authentically ‘brown’, http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=52528

Jews are indigenous to the Palestine region and have lived there continuously for over 3,000 years […]Zionists hoped to live in friendship and cooperation with the Arab population and believed that restoring the land would benefit everyone. Many Arabs welcomed this development, which also attracted Arab immigrants from … An estimated 25 percent to 37 percent of immigrants to pre-state Israel were Arabs, not Jewshttp://www.ifcj.org/site/PageNavigator/sfi_about_history_rebirth

There has never been a 2000 year absence. Jews have lived in Israel/Palestine for 4000 years and those Jewish families who have constantly lived in the country since Biblical times, the mustarabim, are the indigenous Palestinians.

The first Arabs came to the country in the 7th century in the wake of their conquering armies after the death of Mohammed. They’ve been immigrating, and emigrating, ever since, bringing with them their civil wars (in which Jews were severely persecuted by both sides) and their screwed-up environmental concepts that turned forest into desert. Other groups of peoples also immigrated to Israel/Palestine during this time, especially the Druze. (Today, if you call a Druze an Arab, you’ve just insulted him. This was told to me by a Druze.) Perhaps the earliest Zionist pioneers did have to fight Arab marauders and make the desert bloom, but they did not come to an empty land. Maybe it was sparsely populated, but it was not empty of Jews.

Subsequent decades of Zionist history have been characterized by trying to make peace with the Arabs, and totally ignoring the indigenous Jewish community, as if they didn’t exist. White America may have killed off the native peoples of America, but at least they acknowledged that they were there. The treatment of the Palestinian Jews by the Zionist immigrants reflected their treatment by the Zionist movement during the troubled years of the British mandate between 1917 and 1948. There were 4 periods between WWI and 1949 that Palestinian conflicts resulted in a refugee situation:

1920/1. The first Palestinian refugees were Jews. In the aftermath of WWI, British rule in Palestine supplanted 400 years of Turkish rule and a British administration was installed, headed by Ronald Storrs, governor of Jerusalem, and the Chief-of-Staff Richard Waters-Taylor. A week before Easter, Waters-Taylor, with the blessing of Storrs, had made a secret agreement with local Arab nationalist leaders to conduct bloody riots against the Jews of Palestine to show the world just how unpopular Zionism was. (See Benjamin Netanyahu’s A Durable Peace under the chapter “Betrayal.”) During the Arab pilgrimage to the site of Nebi Musa, believed by Muslims to be the burial place of Moses, the Arab masses were whipped into a frenzy and began to riot. This spread throughout the whole of the country beginning in Jerusalem. Their excuse to the world at large was that they were acting out their ‘legitimate’ grievances against the massive Jewish immigration into the country, fostered by the ‘lax’ British policy.

What they conveniently ignored was the massive Arab immigration into the country brought on by the economic opportunities introduced by the Jews. In fact, in the 30’s, President Roosevelt was reported to have commented that Arab immigration to Palestine far exceeded that of Jewish immigration (See A Durable Peace.) In any case, these riots were tame when compared to later riots. Seven Jews were killed, 200 wounded and women were raped. There were partial expulsions from various areas, such as from east Jerusalem, Jaffa, Gaza, and the tiny Jewish community of Khan Yunis, which consisted of just a few families. A total expulsion occurred from Lod. Many just left fearing more of the same, which indeed happened. In east Jerusalem, the remaining Jews were faced with massacre, but a defense force, organized immediately after WWI by Vladimir Jabotinsky, a WWI hero of Jewish Palestine, prevented this from happening. This organization was later to become the Haganah. As a result, Jabotinsky was arrested by the British and given a 15 year prison sentence. He was pardoned the next year due to international pressure.

The parliament in London was outraged at events in Palestine and quickly set about to dismiss both Storrs and Waters-Taylor. They created the office of High Commissioner, the first of which being Sir Herbert Samuel, a Jew. But the anti-Semitic administration still remained in the country. Samuel was a rather weak politician and the administration was successful in prevailing upon him to appoint Haj Amin al Husseini, the notorious Arab nationalist, as Grand Mufti of Arab Palestine, to appease the ‘legitimate’ Arab grievances. He later became a strong nazi ally.

The next year, Husseini orchestrated, with the full backing of the British authorities, a renewal of the most recent riots which resulted in the deaths of, perhaps, as many as 47 Jews. Of these, at least 13 were massacred at an immigrant hostel in Jaffa. The mob was actively aided by the Arab members of the local police. Consequently, more Jews were expelled from Jaffa and Samuel acquiesced to Arab demands and suspended Jewish immigration to the country while allowing Arab immigration to continue unabated. Partial expulsions occurred in Ramle, Beersheba, and Shiloah, the site of the original City of David and burial place of Rabbi Ovadiah Bertinoro, the late 15th century Chief Rabbi of Palestine. The tiny settlements of Kfar Saba and Kfar Malal (birthplace of Ariel Sharon), were totally destroyed and their residents driven out. Both were rebuilt the following year, but other communities were not so lucky. These refugees were either immigrants, or were families that have lived in their homes for generations. To anyone who could see, it was clear – it didn’t matter whether Jews were immigrants or not. The Arabs and British wished to clear Palestine of Jews, period. It is a policy that continues to this day.

In 1922, in a continuing policy of appeasing the Arabs, 75% of Palestine was taken away from the Jews and the Emirate of Transjordan was created, later to become Jordan. First the British, then the Arabs banned the entry of Jews from the area – a policy that continued until very recently. This put those communities of Arabs in Transjordan and even the Judean desert who were of Jewish ancestry in an awkward position. In 1948, these Arabs had always had good relations with their Jewish neighbors, but after 1948, most found themselves living on what became known as the ‘West Bank’ (and Jordan). They were often threatened with death by the other Arabs so that today, they would emphatically deny any Jewish connection.http://www.think-israel.org/silon.refugees.html

There is a myth hanging over all discussion of the Palestinian problem: the myth that this land was “Arab” land taken from its native inhabitants by invading Jews. Whatever may be the correct solution, let’s get a few things straight: As a strictly legal matter, the Jews didn’t take Palestine from the Arabs; they took it from the British, who exercised sovereign authority in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for thirty years prior to Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948. And the British don’t want it back.

[…] The Jews, meaning the people of the Kingdom of Judah, who, in their earlier incarnation as the Israelites, seized the land in the 12th and 13th centuries B.C. from:The Canaanites, who had inhabited the land for thousands of years before they were dispossessed by the Israelites. As the foregoing suggests, any Arab claim to sovereignty based on inherited historical control will not stand up. Arabs are not native to Palestine, but are native to Arabia, which is called Arab-ia for the breathtakingly simple reason that it is the historic home of the Arabs.

The territories comprising all other “Arab” states outside the Arabian peninsula including Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, as well as the entity now formally under the Palestinian Authority were originally non-Arab nations that were conquered by the Muslim Arabs when they spread out from the Arabian peninsula in the first great wave of jihad in the 7th century, defeating, mass-murdering, enslaving, dispossessing, converting, or reducing to the lowly status of dhimmitude millions of Christians and Jews and destroying their ancient and flourishing civilizations. Prior to being Christian, of course, these lands had even more ancient histories. Pharaonic Egypt, for example, was not an Arab country through its 3000 year history.http://mideastoutpost.com/archives/000096.html

[…] OK. Let’s talk about displaced people. The Land of Israel (whom the gentiles call Palestine) was a Jewish country since the arrival of Abraham. There was always a Jewish presence there. In the years 70 CE and 135 CE, the Romans forcefully removed large numbers of the Jewish population from the LOI and brought them to Rome as slaves.

Nevertheless, the LOI continued as a Jewish country according to G-d’s promises. During the 4th century, the Roman Empire became Christian, and Rome turned the LOI into a Byzantine country in which non-Jewish were brought in and settled by Rome. During the 5th century, there was an economic depression in the Eastern Empire and some of the Jewish population moved to neighboring countries to earn a living. At the same time, Rome encouraged more and more gentile Christians to take up residence in the country. Still, the majority of the population was Jewish.

During the 7th century, the newly converted Arab Moslems came up out of the Arabian Penninsula and conquered the LOI, driving out the Byzantines. Many of the native population, both Jewish and non-Jewish were forcefully converted to Islam and the country was forcefully ARABIZED. Those Jews still living there had pressure put upon them to become Moslems. Some did become Moslems and lost their Jewish identity. Those individuals of the population that became Moslem were ARABIZED. That is, they took up the Arab language and for all purposes were acculturated to “look like” Arabs.

From the 7th century onwards, LOI was an ARAB-SPEAKING country. That does not mean that the people living there were “real Arabs”. They were not. They were, in fact, descendants of the original Jewish population and of the Greek speaking population that the Byzantines imported to Christianiize the Land.

Towards the end of the first Christian millenium, the Land was under the control of the Turkish Moslems. From the time immediately following the First Crusade, the Land fell into a sad state. The Turks misuded it economically and ecologically. A once fertile Land under Jewish rule now became a forrest-denuded, malarial swamp. Many people, both Jews and non-Jews left. Most of them were gentiles. The population thinned out. Hardly anyone lived there. The Land was administrated by absentee Turkish landlords. It had became a non-productive province and the Turks didnt care one fig about it. They had more lucrative and productive lands to administer. Starting in the 1500s thru the 1900s, Jews from Europe returned in waves to the LOI. They found a small non-Jewish population scattered here and there throughout the Land. These people were of various nationalities. None of them called themsleves “Palestinians”. There was no such entity. The Land was still ARABIZED and the returning Jews were loyal to the Turkish masters. They did everything possible to restore the Land because they loved in a way that no gentile inhabitants had. They cleared much of the swampland and planted trees and made the Land fertile again. The Turks gave them no thanks. The gentile inhabitants had never done anything like that. They had been content to just let the Land go to hell.

As the Land became productive under the hands of the returning Jews, it became more viable and economically productive. The presence of the Jews and their productivity created jobs. Gentile Arabs from the surrounding lands began to pour into LOI to finf work. The Turks encouraged this because they didn’t want the Land to become “too Jewish.” Beginning in the 19th century, the Turks encouraged Moslems from various countries to come to the LOI, promoising them free land if they did. Many Moslems took up the offer, many of them from BOSNIA came and settled there. THESE WERE EUROPEAN MOSLEMS THAT TOOK ON LOCAL ARAB COLORING AND ASSIMILATED INTO THE NON-JEWISH POPULATION, THEREBY BECOMING “ARABS”.

The Turks then began the policy of restricting the Jews to certain areas of the Land, giving the more favored area to Moslems. Much of this area consisted of the present day Judea and Samaria, the so-called “West Bank of Palestine”. After the First World War, when the British conquered the Turks, they took the LOI away from the Turks and made it a British “protectorate”. They continued to call the Land “Palestine” and called EVERY INHABITANT IN IT, BOTH JEW AND GENTILE, “PALESTINIANS”. That name was an English invention just as the “ARAB” inhabitants of the Land had been a TURKISH INVENTION. In those 2 centuries, 19th and 20th, NO ONE WAS DISPLACED EXCEPT JEWS!!!

The British then proceded to do what they have done everywhere they have gone, divide and conquer. They promised both the Jews and the non-Jews that the Land would be given to their communities, but because they were very interested in oil and had a basically anti-Jewish attitude, they favored the “Arabs”. The first thing they did was stop all Jewish immigration into the country while they allowed and encouraged gentile immigration. Nationalism was on the rise. The non-Jewish Arabized population of the LOI wanted a national identity and they were content to take the name and identity imposed upon them by the Turks and the British, namely “Palestinians”. The Jews did not need to take that identity. They had their own G-d given identity.

The leadership of the “Palestinian” nationalist movement needed a rallying focus, so they used the commonality of religion. Islam became the focus of “Palestinianism”. In 1929, a pogrom was organized in Hebron. Every member of the Jewish community there was murdered, man, woman, child. The British knew who the instigators were. They did nothing to apprehand them. In 1936, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem called for another pogrom against the various Jewish communities of the LOI. By that time, the Jews of the LOI had obtained weapons for their own self defense. They fought back. The British moved through all the Jewish areas and confiscated all weapons they found in the hands of Jews. They left the weapons of the Arabs alone.

It was a known fact that the British did not like the Jews because the Jews refused to act like good colonial third world natives. They considered themselves the equals of the British. The British could not stand it. They were used to treating all colonials as second class citizens. The Jews said to them, “We are not natives. We are as good as you.” The British did not like that at all. They could depend on the Arabs to act like good little dark skinned boys. That made them comfortable. AND the surrounding Arab countries had OIL!!! Why irritate them by irritating their co-religionists in the LOI?

In order to placate the Arabs, the British told the Jews that they were NOT going to hand over the “whole land of Palestine” to them, only the “west bank of Palestine.” Do you know how the “Palestinian leadership rewarded the British?” They signed a deal with the Nazi Germans to advance the German cause in the Middle East. War between Germany and Britain was immanent and everyone knew it. The Germans promised the Arabs that if they would ally themselves with Germany, they (the Germans) would solve the “Jewish problem” for the Arabs at the war’s conclusion. The Jews remained loyal to the British government. It didn’t matter one whit. In order to gain back the Arab sympathies on the eve of war, the British assured the Arabs that no further Jewish immigration into the Land would be allowed. Ships carrying Jews from Europe tried to enter “Palestine”. The British refused them entry and forced them to return to a Europe where the gas chambers awaited them.

WW II broke out. The Arab sympathy was with Germany. They prayed for a German victory. Anwar Sadat, later to become President of Egypt, became a German spy and anti-British terrorist. The Grand Mufti was to be put under arrest by the British but he escaped andfled to Germany, spending the duration of the war there. During the war itself, Jews tried to enter “Palestine” to escape from the Nazis. The British turned them away. After the war, the British continued their policy of not letting Jews enter even though many DISPLACED European Jews had no where else to go.

At this time, the UN wanted the British to give up their mandate on “Palestine”. The British further renegged and told the Jews that only part of the “West Bank” would be theirs. They would have to share the area with the non-Jewish residents. The Jews agreed. The Arabs did not. THEY WANTED THE WHOLE LAND FOR THEMSELVES.

The surrounding Arab countries ] told the non-Jewish residents of the Land that when the British left, their armies would come in and drive the Jews into the Sea. The non-Jewish population was encouraged to evacuate the Land in order to open the way for the Arab armies to operate. Many of them did just that, hoping to come back immanently to a land JUDENREIN. The Bitish left in May, 1948. Israel declared itself a state in the truncated area that the British had left them. Five Arab countries attacked Israel. The Jordanian army moved into the area of the “West Bank” that was to become the “Palestinian” state, and instantly annexed it to Jordan. No one protested. Jordan ruled the “Palestinian” state for 19 years. No one protested and said that the “Palestinians” were displaced and had to have their own country.

For 19 years the Jordanians treated their West Bank people like second class citizens. They were denied 3 basic rights. They were not allowed to open factories in the west bank, they were not allowed to build universities on the west bank, no west bank “Arab” was allowed to have a driver’s license. No one protested. The Jordanians denied Jews access to their holy places in Jerusalem. No one protested. The Jordanians took tomb stones from Jewish cemetaries and turned them into lutrines. No one protested.

In May, 1967, Egypt and Syria got together and declared war on Israel, threatening to drive the Jews into the Sea. No one protested. King Hussein of Jordan called upon his “Arabs” in the west bank to get knives and kill every Jew that they found. The Israelis warned the Jordanians that if they entered the war, Israel would take the west bank away fomr them. Jordan entered the war and lost the west bank that it had illegally annexed 19 years earlier. The Israelis found evidence of inhumane treatment of people in the West Bank by the Jordanians. No one protested. Everybody was busy protesting against the Israeli “aggressor” and the “poor displaced Palestinians”.

Some people have all the propaganda luck. The bleeding heart liberal media went anti-Israel to sell more newspapers. The Soviet Union took up the “Palestinian” cause to win the Arabs over to their side in the cold war. From 1967 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Israel acted as the best ally of the United States, handing over the latest in captured Soviet weaponry to America, asking nothing in return. Israel was repaied by the anti-semitic State Dept of the USA by being pressured to give back territory to the “poor Palestinians”. Meanwhile one thing remains to be told. In 1948, when Israel bacame a state, there were Arabs living there. The Israelis granted them full citizenship. No Arab was asked to leave Israel.

That same year, Arab countries, including Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Lybia, and others KICKED OUT THEIR JEWISH CITIZENS AND MADE THEM LEAVE ALL THEIR EARTHLY BELONGINGS BEHIND! No one protested.

You call yourself a Christian and you grieve for the poor displaced Palestinians? You are just one more gentile hoodwinked by the Arab propaganda mill, abetted by the anti-Israel media who want to sell newspapers, and the Oil company whores who think oil is more important than justice. Cry your crocodile tears, sister. Don’t expect any sympathy from me. The fact that you allow your sympathy for the poor mistreated “non-jews” of the Middle East to over-ride your concern for Biblical prophecy tells me a lot about the so-called Christians in this country who claim to be Bible believers. You are Bible believers so long as it is not good for the Jews. And the hell with real justice and G-d’s word.

ADDENDUM June 22, 2003 – Incidently, there never was a national or geographical entity called “Palestine” in the historical sense that we usually ascribe to nations or geography. “Palestine” was the designation given to the Land Of Israel by the Romans when they incorporated it into their Empire as a province. They named it after the Philistines, the traditional enemies of Israel, in order to humiliate their new Jewish subjects. Since the Arabs living in the Land Of Israel insist that they are the descendants of the ancient Caananites, why don’t they refer to themselves as Caananites rather than Philistines? Arab humor: Take my hostage, please! http://www.kingsolomon.com/literary/essays/palmyth.html

MYTH “The British helped the Jews displace the native Arab population of Palestine.”

FACT

Herbert Samuel, a British Jew who served as the first High Commissioner of Palestine, placed restrictions on Jewish immigration “in the ‘interests of the present population’ and the ‘ absorptive capacity’ of the country.”1 The influx of Jewish settlers was said to be forcing the Arab fellahin (native peasants) from their land. This was at a time when less than a million people lived in an area that now supports more than nine million.The British actually limited the absorptive capacity of Palestine by partitioning the country.

In 1921, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill severed nearly four-fifths of Palestine — some 35,000 square miles — to create a brand new Arab entity, Transjordan. As a consolation prize for the Hejaz and Arabia (which are both now Saudi Arabia) going to the Saud family, Churchill rewarded Sherif Hussein’s son Abdullah for his contribution to the war against Turkey by installing him as Transjordan’s emir.The British went further and placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in what remained of Palestine, contradicting the provision of the Mandate (Article 6) stating that “the Administration of Palestine…shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency…close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes.” By 1949, the British had allotted 87,500 acres of the 187,500 acres of cultivable land to Arabs and only 4,250 acres to Jews.Ultimately, the British admitted the argument about the absorptive capacity of the country was specious. The Peel Commission said: “The heavy immigration in the years 1933-36 would seem to show that the Jews have been able to enlarge the absorptive capacity of the country for Jews.”

The British response to Jewish immigration set a precedent of appeasing the Arabs, which was followed for the duration of the Mandate. The British placed restrictions on Jewish immigration while allowing Arabs to enter the country freely. Apparently, London did not feel that a flood of Arab immigrants would affect the country’s absorptive capacity. During World War I, the Jewish population in Palestine declined because of the war, famine, disease and expulsion by the Turks. In 1915, approximately 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine among 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs. According to the 1922 census, the Jewish population was 84,000, while the Arabs numbered 643,000. Thus, the Arab population grew exponentially while that of the Jews stagnated.

In the mid-1920s, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased primarily because of anti-Jewish economic legislation in Poland and Washington’s imposition of restrictive quotas.The record number of immigrants in 1935 (see table) was a response to the growing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The British administration considered this number too large, however, so the Jewish Agency was informed that less than one-third of the quota it asked for would be approved in 1936.

The British gave in further to Arab demands by announcing in the 1939 White Paper that an independent Arab state would be created within 10 years, and that Jewish immigration was to be limited to 75,000 for the next five years, after which it was to cease altogether. It also forbade land sales to Jews in 95 percent of the territory of Palestine. The Arabs, nevertheless, rejected the proposal.

Jewish Immigrants to Palestine…By contrast, throughout the Mandatory period, Arab immigration was unrestricted. In 1930, the Hope Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants.

The British Governor of the Sinai from 1922-36 observed: “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.” The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the “shortfall of land is…due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.” http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf2.html

In 1915, there were 590000 Arabs in Palestine and only 83000 Jews. By 1922, a census recorded 84000 Jews and 643000 Arabs in the land. Between the world wars, 588000 more Arabs and 470000 more Jews made their way to Palestine. The Arab population would increase by 120 percent between the creation of Transjordan in 1921 and the United Nations decision to partition the land in 1947. Why did the Arabs immigrate to Palestine? To take advantage of the higher standard of living the Jews of Palestine provided to the community. http://books.google.com/books?id=417EdpQMI9IC&pg=PA36

All of a sudden, these thousands of Arabs who immigrated to Israel from virtually every country in the Arab world and northern Africa, and who joined up with the natives, became a ‘national’ entity. A people must start sometime and somewhere, and that could be considered a legitimate creation, except that they all claimed to be descendants of the native Arabs (Turks and Bedouins) of the land, and then claimed that it is they, not the Jews, who have a legal and historical right to the land of Israel.

Harold H. Hart, “Yom Kippur plus 100 days: the human side of the war and its aftermath, as shown through the columns of the Jerusalem post,” p. 273, Hart Pub. Co., 1974, 446 pp.

Who Are The Palestinians […]

They also wondered why these so-called Palestinians were refugees. My former colleagues, all of whom were British officers in the Palestine Police, tell me they have documentary proof that the “Palestinians” are not and never were “Palestinians.” They were and are illegal migrants into the Land of Israel from all the surrounding Arab countries, and they Came searching for work and food from the Jewish settlers, because in their own Arab countries, they were homeless, jobless and on the verge of starvation.

[…] Where did the 1,280,000 Arabs in the British Mandate census of 1946 come from? Obviously the great majority of “Palestinians” were themselves Immigrants or sons or grandsons of immigrants from other Arab lands, that came to partake of the prosperity generated by the Jews. Entire towns and villages in 1948 could trace their origins to other countries, eg Safad (Morocco); Bet Shean (Egypt); Bellad esh Sheikh (Hauran), to name a few . Even during the Holocaust, when the doors of this country were slammed shut In the faces of European Jews looking for succour, the Arab Immigration remained unabated.PROF. R. KENNETH

Beginning with the first wave of Zionist immigration in 1880 and continuing through successive waves before and after World War I, the country was rapidly transformed. The Jews built roads, towns, hospitals, factories, and schools. And as Jewish immigration increased their numbers, it also caused a rapid increase in the Arab population. Many of the Arabs immigrated into the land in response to the job opportunities and the better life afforded by the growing economy the Jews had created – so much so that in 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt was moved to observe that “Arab immigration into Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded the total Jewish immigration during this whole period.”

The improved economic conditions that the influx of Jewish industry and commerce created fueled a steep rise in income and industrialization among the Arabs of Palestine that had no parallel in any neighboring Arab country. Thus, by 1947, the wages of the Arab worker in Haifa were twice what his counterpart was receiving in Nablus, where there was no Jewish presence. Similarly, the number of factories owned by Arabs increased 400 percent between 1931 and 1942, while the number of their employees increased tenfold between 1931 and 1946.

The most dramatic increase in Arab immigration was to the areas of Jewish habitation. Between 1922, the advent of the Mandate, and 1947, the Arab population in the Jewish cities grew by 290 percent in Haifa, 158 percent in Jaffa, and 131 percent in Jerusalem, as compared with 64 percent in Hebron, 56 percent in Nablus, and 37 percent in Bethlehem, where there were few or no Jews. But the fact that Arabs migrated into what would eventually be a domain of millions of Jews hardly altered the prevailing international conception that this was to be a Jewish land, albeit one with an Arab minority. Thus, the unceasing Jewish claim to the land has been backed up in the last hundred years by unrelenting Jewish efforts to settle it and bring its open wastes back to life.

…The Israelis have been in a position of extreme restraint since day one, because the British always considered the Jews provocateurs just because they were there. They treated the Arabs as natives in the Jewish national home, and, they allowed Arabs to come in illegally and take places that were being frantically cleared by Jews for other Jews to come from Hitler’s Germany. It’s a very concise and very traceable history. If you trace it, it loses the complicated factor and it becomes quite clear. http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/janfeb01/findingtruth.html

Myths: False Premises… 4) The Arabs were there first; it was Arab land. 5) The Jews “stole” the Arab land….7) Palestine is Israel; and all Israel constitutes Palestine. “In 1948 Palestine became Israel”. 8) Only Jews immigrated into Palestine; whereas Arabs were natives for millennia.

Facts: The Reality:

C) Even after the Roman defeat in 70 A.D. the Jews (with their Zionist dream) never vacated the Holy Land.

D) The area known as Palestine covered areas both East and West of the Jordan; and the Arabic-speaking people there thought of themselves as Syrians, Turks, or simply “Arabs”… but never as “Palestinians”.

E) The Arabs did not begin to think in terms of “nationalism” until early in the 1900’s. Even T.E. Lawrence was not able to inject them with “nationalism” as late as World War I.

F) Islamic religious prejudice often resulted in anti-Jewish violence, throughout the Middle East, even before Israel became a state in 1948.

G) The British later described these religious persecutions as being “Arab Nationalism”, so as to justify limiting Jewish immigration from Europe.

H) The British illegally “gave” Mandate lands (specifically allocated for a Jewish national home) to the Arabs instead.

I) The Arab peasants had been rendered landless by their own Arab landlords, natural disasters, excessive taxes, and Arab money lenders.

J) In 1923 Britain illegally gave Abdulah 77 percent of Palestine (the whole “East Bank”) to protect rights to Arab oil, and the Suez canal, etc. for purposes of the British Empire. This created Transjordan; which became Jordan in 1946.

K) Thus, Jordan is the “independent Palestinian state” in the area; and was carved out of what was to become Israel.

L) In 1947 the UN further carved up the 23 percent west of the Jordan, into Israel, another Palestinian state (which the Arabs rejected) and an internationalized Jerusalem.

M) The Jews accepted the UN proposal; the Arabs did not.

N) The UN has changed the definition of “Refugee” for the Arabs only; who therefore need only be in the land two years to qualify.

Robert Fisk (“Telling it like it isn’t,” Los Angeles Times, 12/27/05) must be living in “cloud cuckoo-land.” He objects to alleged pro-Jewish and what he seems to imply as “pro-Israel” or “pro-Zionist” bias in U. S. newspapers. He wants the West Bank to be referred to as “Occupied Palestine” and objects to “Jewish” enclaves there being called “settlements,” “neighborhoods,” or “outposts” in the same manner that he does those who attack American forces in Iraq being called “terrorists,” “rebels,” or “remnants of the former regime.” Presumably he wants them to be called “patriots,” “nationalists,” or some other such honorable designation — again, in the same manner that he wants the Israeli presence on the West Bank ( there is no longer a presence in the Gaza Strip so we do not have to worry about that ) to be referred to as “colonies’!

When did “the Palestinians,” as he calls them, ever receive legal charter to the West Bank and when was it recognized by international law? Like it or not the “Jewish” claim was recognized (forget the Biblical one — presumably in his view the right of conquest gave the Muslim world a more recent one) by the Balfour Declaration in 1917 on the eve of the British conquest of the same and appended to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1921, itself confirmed in the British Palestine Order-in-Council of 1922.

Though it is true that there was a later “Partition of Palestine,” adopted by the successor United Nations, in 1947, this was immediately rejected by all surrounding Arab States in 1948 (including it would appear by “the Palestinians” themselves) and, in fact, became a “dead letter” when the Jordanians (then the “Trans-Jordanians”) occupied the area and absorbed it in 1949 — a unilateral annexation objected to virtually by no one (at the time, hardly even “the Palestinians” themselves). Was this “Colonialism” by his definition? Did the West Bank and all that was constructed there by the “Trans-Jordanian Government” (now calling itself, therefore, “the Jordanian Government”) then become a Jordanian “Colony”?

Has he seen the pictures of “Palestine” in the Nineteenth Century? I refer him to such British travel writers as David Roberts in the 1820s and ’30s and Charles Wilson’s Ordinance Survey of Jerusalem in 1869 which show that the land was virtually deserted having been devastated by various wars and given over to what D. H. Lawerence would have called “the trump of the mosquito” (malaria). In fact, the census for Palestine which was reprinted in the classic 1905-6 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica shows Jews to have been a majority in Jerusalem to Muslims by about 60% to 25%, the rest being Christian, even at that time.

In other words, between the years 1917-18 and 1948, there was as much “Arab” immigration into Palestine as “Jewish,” presumably attracted by this increased prosperity as immigration always is — the only difference being that whereas the latter was well-documented and carefully watched, the former was not monitored at all since it occurred over what was on the whole a completely porous “inland” border. This is an incontrovertible fact because there was a period of economic prosperity caused as much by economically viable Jewish immigration into Palestine as a regular British administration…

The demand to grant a state to Arab immigrants to this country and their army is without foundation.

By Ron Breiman

From Gideon Levy to Barack Obama, from Yariv Oppenheimer to Ismail Haniyeh, from Zahava Gal-On to Tzipi Livni – they all recite the same phrase: It’s time to put an end to the “occupation.” Once the “occupation” ends, peace will be sealed. Once the Jews are expelled from the heart of their country, redemption will come to Zion. From here emerges “the solution” – two states within the tiny piece of prized property that remains, the western Land of Israel, not the Greater Land of Israel.

We would do well to recall that the PLO – the (all of!) Palestine Liberation Organization – was founded in 1964 before there was an “occupation,” “the West Bank,” “territories,” and the other political terms that were designed to disinherit the Jewish people from the heart of their country, those swaths of land that were occupied – without quotation marks – by the Jordanian army in 1948, an occupation that lasted just 19 years. The PLO’s goal was not to liberate the territories from Jordan, because those lands were in Arab hands. Rather, it aimed to liberate the “occupied” territories from the State of Israel, which lay within “the Green Line.”

We would do well to recall that the PLO never changed its spots. It failed to do so when it signed for “peace” with the naive Yitzhak Rabin, who was lured into the trap sprung for him by the Osloites. And it failed to do so when it allegedly abrogated its charter. Even the recent Fatah conference and the statements by the “moderate” Holocaust denier, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, can attest to this. The goal was and remains to this day: the liberation of the “occupied” territories from Israel, namely the State of Israel within the confines of the Green Line.

On the other hand, when the Osloites let Yasser Arafat and his gang of henchmen come into the heart of the country with his army of terrorists, they brought with them their own army of occupation. As things went, thanks to the shock after the Rabin assassination, the Osloites quickly handed the cities of Judea and Samaria over to the occupier, an error that the slain prime minister apparently did not intend to commit. This is how liberated territories became occupied territories, without quotation marks. In Operation Defensive Shield, the Israel Defense Forces was compelled to pay a steep price in blood to liberate the heart of the country from Arab occupation.

Most of the Arabs in the Land of Israel immigrated here after our waves of aliyah. In other words, Zionism and the prosperity it engendered spawned “the Palestinian people.” Since the Arab occupation of the Land of Israel in the seventh century, and throughout the centuries of Muslim occupation, not one of the occupiers viewed this land as anything more than a distant imperial outpost.

The demand to grant a state to Arab immigrants to this country and their army, which is stationed here thanks to the blindness of certain Jews and the nations of the world, is without foundation. It is tantamount to legitimizing a reality that was created here after the criminal act that allowed an occupying army to enter this country.

The critics’ responses are predictable: What do you propose, that the Arabs just evaporate into thin air? In contrast with the critics who espouse a racist transfer of Jews from Judea and Samaria, I reject any forcible transfer of any population group. Perhaps there is no solution to the problem. There is certainly no solution at this point. But this is no reason to commit suicide or sacrifice the Zionist vision on the altar of “peace.”

I do not want a binational state. If there is a solution, it cannot be found within the confines of just the western Land of Israel. In the long term, the solution will be a regional one that combines democracy, demography and geography. The Arabs of the Land of Israel will continue to live in their present homes and will hold Jordanian and Egyptian (for Gazans) citizenship, voting for their respective parliaments. In the long term, citizens of Jordan who comprise an overwhelming majority in eastern Transjordan will gain power in Amman. It is there that a solution will be found for their brothers who live west of the Jordan River.

But in the meantime, we must end the occupation. The Arab occupation in the Land of Israel…

Arab- Muslim Waves of Immigration to Palestine (the Land of Israel )/ DR. Rivka Shpak Lissak

Palestinians are not the Indigenous people of the Holy Land

The Palestinian narrative, which is now widely accepted as a fact of history around the world, is the result of a systematic indoctrination through propaganda.The Palestinians are neither the “Indians” nor the “Africans” of the Holy Land.Most Palestinians immigrated to the Holy Land between the 19th and 20th centuries, during the Ottoman rule (1516 – 1918) and the British Mandate rule (1918 – 1948).

Jewish settlement in Palestine during the British Mandate period and development works by the government created new and varied industries and construction projects, thus creating an abundance of work places, which attracted immigrant workers from Arabic and Muslim countries.

Arabs penetrated into the land of Israel (the ancient name of Palestine) in 4 waves

First Wave (7TH Century)

The first wave was after the occupation of the country by the Arabs in the 7th century A.D. The Arab – Muslim occupation of Palestine lasted about 400 years (640 – 1099). Most scholars agree that the ethnic- religious structure of the population remained essentially unchanged from the days of the Byzantine occupation (324CE – 640CE), and the majority of the population consisted of Greek Orthodox Christians and 2 minorities: Jews and Samaritans. The number of Arabs settled in Palestine was negligible.

The Muslim army emerging from the Arabian Peninsula was comprised of Bedouin warriors who moved along with their families and flocks. Prof Moshe Sharon, rejects the theory that the 7th century Arabic conquest was immediately accompanied by massive Arabic settlement in the country. He gives several reasons for the absence of massive Arabic penetration into the Land of Israel prior to the 9th century:

I. Umayyad policies (640-750CE) prevented Bedouins from entering the country.The ruling Umayyad dynasty’s interest was to maintain the existing administrative and economic systems and to keep the peasant population on the land. Regional governors appointed by the Umayyad took pains to prevent the entry of Bedouins into settled areas. The Christian traveler Arkulfus who traveled the country in 670CE, shortly after the Arabic conquest, described it as densely populated with Christians from Jerusalem to the Galilee. Umayyad rulers signed treaties with the Christian and Jewish populations and promised to secure their lives and property. They kept in place the Christian administrators and Greek continued to be the administrative language until the 8th century, and in some places to the beginning of the 9th century.II. The conquering army continued on to new conquestsBedouin warriors did not settle on the land because they continued to advance towards Syria and other destinations. Arabic warriors advanced northwards to the Taurus Mountains, east towards Iran, and south-west towards Egypt and North Africa, and from there to Spain. Michael Assaf also states in his book, History of the Arab Rule in the Land of Israel, that the conquest thrust could not spare forces for settlement. The Arabs’ system was to establish cities in the conquered areas that served as military bases from where warriors emerged to conquer the surrounding areas. Israel is the only country where no such cities were built: Ramle was the only city built by the Arabs, in 711CE, nearly 100 years after the conquest. It was not a military base but an administrative center which replaced Caesarea as the capital of the Byzantine Palestina-Prima district. Sharon emphasizes that Arabs comprised a negligible minority in Ramle’s population. The Arabic geographer Al Ya’akubi wrote that Ramle’s population was mixed, and comprised mostly of Samaritans and Jews.III. Preference for living in the periphery of settled areasAs the Bedouin warriors at that time were nomads, those who reached Israel were not interested in urban or agrarian life and preferred to live as nomads on the border of the settled region rather than within it. Furthermore, the settled regions were under the protection of the rulers. The Umayyad Caliphs themselves constructed their palaces on the border of the desert – for example, the Hisham palace near Jericho.Prof. Nehemia Levtzion, in book, Islam, an Introduction to the Religion’s History, wrote that the Arabs tended to segregate themselves, maintain their tribal social structure and nomadic life style, and did not settle in the populated region.

Hasson lists in his article, “The Spread of Arabic Tribes in the Land of Israel during the First Century of the Hajjara (7th Century).” additional reasons for warriors avoiding the settled regions:

I. Fear of disease – the epidemic that broke out in the country in 639 resulted in the death of many warriors (some estimate as many as 25,000 died) including Muhammad’s cousin and commanders of the Arab army.II. Absence of empty space – the Umayyad did not exile the local population. Only the Byzantine aristocracy and military fled the country, and, according to some historians, the Greek-Christian urban upper classes left as well.

Hasson notes one exception: Bedouins settled in Tiberias and Beth Shean. Arabs occupied houses in inland cities – Tiberias, Jerusalem and others, that had been deserted by the Greek Christian upper classes who fled because of the Muslim conquest. The surrender agreements of Beth Shean and Tiberias mention the transfer of 50% of the houses to Arabs.

At the end of the 7th century or the beginning of the 8th, a decision was made to also settle Muslims in the coastal cities of Ashkelon, Acre, Caesarea, and Tyre, to protect the country against Byzantine attacks from the sea. In his article “The Cities of the Land of Israel under Muslim Rule”, Prof Moshe Sharon points out that the Bedouin warriors were fearful of the sea and refused to settle along the coast despite being offered land in return, and therefore Muslim Persians were sent there to settle.

An Arabic 9th century source attests to the composition of the coastal cities population, which included Jews, Samaritans, Persians, Greeks, and a few Arabs.

At a later stage, soldiers released from the Caliph’s Muslim army settled in villages and towns that had been deserted by Christians fleeing ahead of the Arab conquerors, but no numerical data is available.

In summary, Umayyad rulers’ policies did not emphasize Arabic settlement in the country nor the conversion of its population, but rather acculturation, the introduction of the Arabic language and culture while protecting the local population against Bedouin raids that harmed farming. Islamization policies were hardly enforced with only a few exceptions, as during the time of the Caliph Omar II (717-720). Acculturation (Arabization) advanced faster than Islamization. No significant change in the population composition took place and the population remained mostly Christian, with Jewish and Samaritan minorities.

Second Wave (Middle of the 9thCentury – 11yh Century)

The second wave came from the middle of the 9th century until the occupation of the country by the Crusaders in 1099. During these years Beduins (Arab nomad tribes) from the deserts of Arabia, Trans-jordan, Syrian desert, Sinai and Egypt invaded the country and gradually settled in deserted villages after they robbed and have driven out the local peasants, many of them Jews. Still, the country was settled along religious- ethnic lines with small enclaves: The north of the Shomron mountain became Arabic, but the south and the Jerusalem area was Christian, and so was the western Galilee. The eastern Galilee was Jewish and the Cities along the shore were mixed, with a Muslim minority.

The Population during Crusaders’ Rule (1099 -1260)

The Crusaders massacred during the conquest of the country many Arabs and many others ran away. During the Crusaders rule the Northern part of the country, the Galliee, was settled by Christians in the west and Jews in the east with some Arabic enclaves.

The mountains of Samaria were settled by Arabs and Samaritans, but the mountains of Judea and around Jerusalem was mostly Christian, with some Arabic enclaves.

The Southern part of the country was mostly settled by Bedouins, who were nomads.

In short, most of 470,000 people who lived in the Holy Land were Christians of Greek- Macedonean and Syrian- Aramaic (non- Arabs) origin.

The Population during Mamluks’ Rule (1260 – 1516)

The Mamluks conquered most of the country from the Crusaders in 1260. They destroyed the cities along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea between 1260 – 1290. These cities were populated mostly by Christians of Greek- Macedonian origin or Syrian – Aramaic origin. Many were massacred or ran away before the Mameluk army arrived.

The cities along the shore, Acre, Arsuf, Jaffa, Ashdod, Ashkelon, except Gaza, remained deserted during the Mamluke Period.The valleys of Jesreel and Beit Shean were densely populated by some Arab villages and nomad Bedouin. Also, there were few Arab villages along the shores of the Mediterrean Sea. The Geek Orthodox population lost its majority in the 14th century after consisting the majority of the population since 135 CE, first as pagans and as Christians since the 5th century CE.

The rate of Palestine’s population decreased dramatically because of the e massacreds, the emigration of Christians, the Black Death, and the economic situation. A certain amount of Christians were forced to convert to Islam.

The Population during Ottomans’ Rule (1516 – 1918)

The cities along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea remained deserted until the Ottoman government started to restore their ruins and invited Arabs and Muslims to settle there. This happened during the 18th- 19th centuries.

The Third Wave (16th – 17th Century)

The third wave began after the occupation of the country by the Turks during the 16th and 17th centuries. Arabs, mainly Bedouins, and Muslims from Lebanon, and Syria came to settle in the Galilee. According to the Turkish census, by the 16th century, there were about 200,000 people in the country of Western Jordan, mostly Muslims. But the economic situation and the lack of personal security caused people to leave, Muslims included.

During the 18th century the population became smaller and smaller Tourists from Europe and the United States who visited the country described an uncultivated deserted land.

The Fourth Wave, Part One (1832 – 1917)

The last and the largest wave came between around the middle of the 19th century and 1948 when Israel was established. This wave started during the conquest of the country by the son of Muhammad Ali between 1832 1840.Egypt settled along the shore and the valleys, about 100,000 Egyptian peasants. Also, Arabs and Muslims were invited by the Ottoman rulers to settle in the deserted country. The Zuabbian tribe was invited in 1873 from Irbid, Trans-Jordan to settle in the southern Galilee and the Izrael Valley. Muslims from Muslim countries such as Kurds and Cireassians settled in the north.

Historians are divided on the size of the population on the eve of the British conquest of Palestine. The rate of the Arab-Muslim population was about 250,000.

The Population during the British Mandate Period (1918 – 1948)

The Fourth Wave, Part Two (1917 – 1948)

The second part of the largest wave came during the British Mandate occupation, between 1917 and 1948 when Israel was established. Arabs and Muslims from Arabic and Muslim countries entered illegally the country under the Turks and later under the British mandate from the eastern, northern and southern borders looking for jobs created by the Zionist movement and later by the British Mandate (1918 – 1948).The Arab population of the Sharon area (between Tel Aviv and Haifa, the center of Jewish settlements) grew from 10,000 to more than 30,000 from 1922 – 1940s.The Arab population of the south (between Jaffa and the Egyptian border) grew by more than 200% between 1917 – 1940s. About 35,000 Arabs from the Haurain, South Syria came looking for work.

From 1870 to 1948 the Arabic population grew by 270%. Even in Egypt, the Arab country with the highest birth rate, the rate was only 105%, which proves that a significant part of the Arabic population growth came from immigration. By 1921when the British government performed its first census the number of Arabs and Muslims amounted to about 500,000. The 1931 British Census included about 30 different languages spoken by the Muslim population in Palestine. They were illegal immigrant workers from Arabic and Muslim countries. The high rate of children’s deaths, law life expectancy and the lack of health services in the country made it impossible to reach 270% as a result of birth rate.

In Short, from about 250,000 around the end of the 19th century, many of them bedouins, the Arabic population grew to about 1,250,000 in 1948. The Palestinian claim that they are the ancient population of the so called Palestine has no ground.

Winston Churchil, said in May 22, 1939 that the Arab immigration to Palestine during the British Mandate was so large that their numbers grew in such proportion that even if all Jews immigrated to Palestine they could not reach that number.

Franklin D.Roosevelt, said in May 17, 1939 that the Arab immigration to Palestine since 1921 was much greater that Jewish immigration.

A significant part of the 1948 Palestinian refugees were first or second generation illegal immigrant workers.

Arab Immigration into the Coastal Plains of Israel (the Sharon) During the British Mandate

According to the Arabic- Palestinian propaganda, the Palestinians are the indigenous people of the country called Judea in the past, then Palestina under the British Mandte.This article and others in the future will prove this propaganda is an attempt to rewrite history in order to eliminate the Jewish state.

Ma’ayan Hess-Ashkenazi researched the Arabic immigration to the Sharon, and this is what he found:

The Sharon area lies between the Tanninim Creek in the north and the Yarkon stream in the south, and between the foot of the mountains of Samaria in the east and the Mediterranean Sea in the west. According to data published by the Mandate Government, the Arabic population in the Sharon increased more than three-fold during its time. At the beginning of the Mandate period there were about 10,000 Arabs (mostly Muslim) in the Sharon, and in 1944 there were more than 30,000. By the time the Mandate was ended, in 1947, more Arabs had moved to the Sharon.

Demographic sources for the British Mandate period in Israel include the 1922 and 1931 censuses and data on the rural population from 1945. In addition to the British sources researchers can access sources of the Jewish settlement during the Mandate period, including the Haganah archive, the Jewish press, and studies conducted during the period, as well as personal interviews with people from that era.

The total data published by the Mandate government show that the number of Arabs grew from 752,048 in 1914 to 1,294,000 in 1944. The Arabic population nearly doubled in 30 years.

Data on natural increase published by the Mandate government show a significant natural increase in the Arabic population. Among the Muslims, the natural increase rose from 10 children per 1000 population to 29.1 children per 1000 population. Among the Christians, the natural increase reached 30.1 children per 1000 population by the end of the British Mandate. The main reason for this increase was the decrease in mortality rate from 25-30 per 1000 to 20 per 1000.

Scholars are divided over the contribution of Arabic immigration into Israel to the increase in population during the Mandate period. According to data published by the Mandate government, the natural increase in Muslim population contributed 88% of the total increase, whereas immigration contributed 12%; and among the Christians, natural increase contributed 72% of the total population increase, whereas immigration contributed 28%.

An investigation of the statistical data of the Mandate government shows differences in the rates of increase of Arabic population between areas that enjoyed economic and demographic development, such as the Coastal Plains and the Sharon, and areas that did not enjoy such development, such as the district of Jennin. In Jennin, the average natural increase stood at 70%, while in the Coastal area and the Sharon it was several hundreds of percent.

The Mandate government data show that at the beginning of the period, there were about 10,000 Arabs living in the Sharon area, some nomads or semi-nomads, and most in permanent settlements. At the end of the Mandate period there were about 30,000 Arabs in the Sharon area, with some 20,000 living in permanent settlements and about 10,000 nomads.

A careful examination of the population growth in the Sharon concludes that there was a difference between the Mandate government’s rates of population increases for the whole country and those for the Sharon area. In the Sharon, immigration contributed significantly to the population increase. This study examined 35 Arabic villages and suburbs in cities of mixed population. In 1922, 9,892 Arabs were living in the villages and the suburbs, in 1931 their number grew to 14,261, and in 1944 to 25,930. Further growth between 1945 and 1948 must be added. According to these data, the population increase in these villages and suburbs between 1922 and 1931 ranged from 37% to 510%, while from 1931 to 1944, the population increase in these villages and suburbs ranged from 28% to 138%. It should be noted that there were more settlements where the population increased by 100% or more than by a lower percentage.

For example, in Abou Kashakh the population numbered 200 in 1922, and 1,007 in 1931, an increase by 400% .In 1931 it numbered 1,007 and in 1944 it was 2,400, an increase of 138%.. In the Faliq area, on the other hand, there were no Arabs until 1944, when 1,030 of them settled in the place. In Sheikh Mounis there were 664 residents in 1922, growing to 1,154 in 1931 and 1,930 in 1944, an increase of 67% in 13 years and 190% in 22 years.

The Causes for Immigration

Draining of the Sharon SwampsThe Jewish National Fund, together with the Mandate Health Department, began draining the Sharon swamps in the early 1920’s. The drainage checked the spread of malaria and decreased the mortality rate among the Arabs in the area. The drainage project required hundreds of workers, and Arabs work immigrants from the Arabic world who were employed in the works subsequently settled in the area.

The Development of the Citrus Industry

Planting and tending the orchards and the fruit created employment and attracted Arabs from the Arabic world to the area. The planted areas grew from 70,000 dounams (17,500 acres) in 1931 to 128,000 dounams (32,000 acres) in 1946.

Construction Works

The establishment of the Jewish towns of Binyamina, Kfar Sabba, Ra’anana, Herzeliya, Ramat Hasharon, Giv’at Shaul, and others, brought about a construction boom which created employment for hundreds of workers, attracting workers from the Arabic world. Coarse sand was one of the materials used in construction, attracting camel owning Bedouins to work in its transportation.

New Water Sources

The fourth factor which encouraged Arab immigration into the Sharon was the water drilling projects which improved the water supply and increased the area’s agricultural output and its population sustainment and absorption rate.

The Composition of the Arabic Workforce in the Sharon

Farmers

The workforce in the Sharon was comprised of Arabic farmers whose economic situation in the years 1926 – 1932 suffered from cattle diseases, low rainfall, low prices for agricultural produce, and locust attacks. The work places created by the Jewish National Fund, the Mandate government, the Citrus industry, and the construction boom saved them from certain hunger.

BedouinsDocuments of the Hagana Organisation indicate that members of Bedouin tribes from the Negev, the Sinai, and Trans-Jordan were employed in these works and ended up settling in the Sharon.

Horanni’s

Towards the end of the 1920’s, Arab workers from the Horan region in the south of Syria began arriving in the country, including the Sharon. According to the Syrian Governor they numbered between 30,000 and 35,000. The Hebrew newspaper “Davar” reported on 2 July 1934 that 25,000 Horanni’s “made Aliya [immigrated] into the country.”

Ten years after the Mandate was established, the Arabic population in the Sharon had grown by 50%. It is impossible to reasonably explain such increase by natural causes alone. The huge increase in Arabic population was even more remarkable in villages close to Jewish settlements, whose number grew from 25 to 77 during the Mandate period. In Bir Addas, for example, which is situated close to the Jewish town of Magdi-el, the population increased by 216%, with 40% of the village’s men working in neighbouring settlements.

In contrast, Bedouins and Arabic farmers from the mountainous region, which was hit by natural disasters, preferred to move to cities such as Jaffa and Haifa, where the living standards were higher.

During the Arabic Revolt, in 1936—1939, Arabic fighters from neighbouring Arabic countries arrived in Samaria, where they ended up settling following the suppression of the revolt by the Mandate government.

World War II hit the citrus industry hard when it brought an end to the exporting of citrus to Europe, but the British Army provided employment to the Arabs in the construction and maintenance of the bases it established in the Sharon. The British Army required food, and its demand for agricultural produce rescued the Arabic agriculture in the Sharon. The need for manpower in the British bases and camps attracted more Arab workers from the Arabic countries. The British brought with them in the 1940’s Arabic workers from Egypt who settled near Kfar Tzur south of Netanya, establishing a settlement that numbered hundreds of inhabitants. Bedouins, Egyptians, and Horanni’s, who worked in the British camps and in the industries that were established in Netanya after the war, settled in Um Haled near Netanya. In addition, during the war, villagers moved from the mountains and established settlements in the Sharon. Some were descended from Egyptians who were settled in the country by Mouhammad ‘Ali during his rule of the area (1832—1840). Data on the rural regions published by the Mandate Government in 1944/5 listed Bedouin tribes that settled in the Sharon, such as ‘Arab-a-nussirat, ‘Arab-al-marmara, and more.

The spread of Tel Aviv in the direction of Sheikh Mounis during the 1930’s and 1940’s, increased Arabic immigration to the village. Its population grew from 664 in 1922 to 1,930 in 1944. Many of these new residents were Bedouins who arrived from neighbouring countries and found employment in construction, sand transportation, and industry. Many of the village residents supplied agricultural produce to the markets in Tel Aviv.

In Short,

Jewish settlement in the Sharon during the British Mandate period and development works by the government brought about the elimination of malaria and the provision of medical services which improved the health conditions in the Arabic villages, reduced the infant and adult mortality rates, and increased the longevity rate. New and varied industries created an abundance of work places, attracting Arabs and Bedouins to the Sharon, many of them from Egypt. During World War II, the British Army further created employment and increased demand for agricultural produce. The increase in sources for livelihood brought about an increase in the Arabic population in the Sharon, from 10,000 to 30,000 in less than 30 years.

The Immigration of Egyptian Workers into the Land of Israel during the British Mandate Period

Prof. Moshe Braver of the Geography Faculty in the University of Tel Aviv, who is a world-renowned geographer, based his study, titled “Immigration as a factor in the Growth of the Arab village in Israel” (Economic Review, 1975) on a Mandate Government survey of Arabic villages which he participated in and which included interviews with village Mukhtars (leaders) conducted during the Mandate period. Because most of the Arabic villages along the coast were destroyed during the War of Independence, a second survey was conducted between 1968—1978 in villages that were not destroyed during the war. The study looked at the immigration of workers and poor farmers from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Trans-Jordan into Mandate-ruled Israel.

One of the topics of his research was the immigration of Egyptian workers during the Mandate period and their settlement mainly in the coastal plains. Although immigrants from other countries also settled along the coastal plains, this article focuses on those from Egypt.

According to Braver’s study, an immigration wave from Egypt into Israel accompanied the British army as it conquered the land from the Turks in 1917-1918, and continued until the mid-1940’s (i.e., the end of World War II). Egyptian workers who were employed to service the British army in Egypt followed it into Israel. Egyptian immigration was also greatly influenced by the growth in the Jewish citrus agro-industry which expanded 10-fold in the 1920’s and 1930’s and required many workers. The British military camps which were set up in the area, the Jewish construction works, and public works initiated by the Mandate Government and the Jewish Agency required workers as well. Egyptian workers made good of the extensive employment opportunities these offered and settled in the Land of Israel on the coastal plains.

Village population growth in the southern and central coastal plains cannot be explained by natural growth alone, when considering infant mortality rates, life expectancy, and the level of health care services available in the Arabic villages. Egyptian immigrants were significant contributors to this growth. Prof. Braver concluded that at least one-third of these villages’ population increase was due to immigrants from Egypt.

Between the years 1922—1944, the population of Bet Dajan grew by 127%, that of Yazour grew by 214%, Salame’s population grew by 476%, Yabne’s population grew by 203%, the population of Kubeiba (near Rehovot) grew by 211%, in Fajjah the increase reached 630%, while Sawalme holds the record population growth: 1040%. Similar figures were recorded for the rest of the Arabic villages in the southern and central coastal plains.

The Mandate Government conducted a survey in several villages in 1941 which Prof. Braver participated in. The researchers interviewed the villages’ Mukhtars (leaders) who confirmed that villagers who did not own land in the village were Egyptian immigrants who settled in their villages. Yabne’s former Mukhtar, who fled to Gaza in 1948, testified in an interview held in Gaza that “in his village there were many Egyptians who settled in Yabne in the time of the British”.

The Egyptian workers, who, as mentioned, were land-less, used to live in their own separate housing blocks, and effectively established immigrants’ neighborhoods in those villages.

Prof. Braver refuted the claim that population growth in villages along the coastal plains was the result of natural increase, by comparing it with data on the natural population increase in villages in the Jennin district, which was completely Arabic (Western Bank today). Between the years 1922—1944, population growth there ranged from 50% to 80%, population movements were few and the number of leavers was similar to the number of arriving immigrants. This led to the conclusion that in the Jennin district, population growth was the result of natural increase at an average rate of 70% rather than 119% – 1040% (the rate along the coastal plains). The results were further compared to the population growth data in the areas of Nablus and Ramallah (Western Bank today) and the data for natural increase in Syria and Lebanon.

The study examined also the possibility that the villages in the coastal plains grew as a result of internal immigration of Arabs who left their villages in the Galilee and Samaria for the better employment prospects available in the coastal plains, and settled there. It was found that people from Samaria left to go abroad, or to the cities of Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa, but only few moved to the coastal plain villages.

Earlier immigration from Egypt into the Land of Israel was researched by Prof. Moshe Sharon, who specialized in Bedouin history in Israel, and Youssuf Suwa’ed, who researched the rule of Bedouin Sheiks. According to their studies, the Naddi Tribe immigrated to the area of Gaza from Egypt in 1814, and this immigration contributed to the population composition of the Arabic villages and towns in the southern coastal plains during the Ottoman period. Akkal and his tribesmen served the Ottoman government and fought it alternately, taking over the Galilee for a certain period. From 1832 to 1840 the Land of Israel was ruled by Muhammad Ali, ruler of Egypt, and his son Ibrahim Pasha. During those years there was immigration from Egypt into various areas of Israel, including the coastal plains and the cities of Gaza and Jaffa.

BRITISH RUSH FORCE TO CALM PALESTINE; Martial Law to Be Declared at First Sign of Trouble Over Partition Report COMMISSIONER FLIES BACK Grand Mufti Also Returns to Deal With Reported Split in Arab Opposition to Plan URGES ROOSEVELT TO ACT Pro-Palestine Federation Group at Washington Scores PartitionWireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES.July 06, 1937, Page 11Martial law will be declared in Palestine at the first sign of disturbances … a policy of restricted Jewish immigration and unrestricted Arab immigration, … http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10F1FF83A5817778ADDAF0894DF405B878FF1D3

Palestinian Jews – LookLex Encyclopaedia 1660: Massacre of a large part of the Jewish population in Safed and Jerusalem.…Early 19th century: Immigration of Circassian and Bosnian Muslims to the northern parts of Palestine.1830’s: Egyptian Arab immigration to Palestine. http://lexicorient.com/e.o/judaism.palestinian.htm

Indeed, in 1934 3022 non-Jewish ” travellers ” remained illegally in Palestine as against 2907 Jews, …Of the 3256 non-Jewish travellers who remained illegally in Palestine in 1935, only 1662 were Arabs. As regards the other type of illegal immigrant — those who evade the frontier controls — it is impossible to give statistics. Some of these are certainly Jews, but it may be that the proprtion of Arabs is higher in this category than in the other two.It is frequently alleged that the Hauran, in Southern Syria, and Transjordan are important sources of Arab immigration. http://books.google.com/books?id=Bn5tAAAAMAAJ&q=Trans+Jordan+Hauran+Arab+immigration+palestine

Rural Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine: Distribution and Population Density During the Late Ottoman and Early Mandate Periods – Pages 33, 186 David Grossman – 2010 – 269 pages

An example of compounded disasters is the multi-stage Hauran rebellion. It started in 1879 and lasted into the … The worst incident of this period was the severe famine that afflicted Egypt ( 1783-85). According to Volney, it lost about a sixth of its population. His usually trustworthy and carefully worded report suggests that the demographic decline was mainly due to massive out-migration from the country to Syria (mainly Acre and Sidon) and Palestine (the term referred by him to Gaza District). The disaster lasted over three successive years and was among the principal causes for one of the greatest migration waves of Egyptians into Syria and Palestine … http://books.google.com/books?id=ArNBaNcahNIC&pg=PA33Other waves of immigration from various Muslim countries brought many refugees to the area, especially between 1855 and 1885. They were mainly Caucasians ( Circassians), Bosnians and Algerians who were refugees from France or other … http://books.google.com/books?id=ArNBaNcahNIC&pg=PA186

But it is well to recognise that there was also a parallel process at work during the 19th century, namely the immigration to Palestine of tens of thousands of Maghrebi (North African), Egyptian, Bosnian, Kurdish and Caucasian peasants and beduin tribes, either on their own volition or by Ottoman design. Many of these immigrants established new villages, particularly in the less populated lowlands of the Galilee and in the Coastal Plain. The names of some of the villages bore testimony to these immigrant waves; for example, there were a number of Kafr Misrs (‘Misr’ is Egypt in Arabic) and two ‘ Kirads’ (indicating Kurdish origins).

The periodization from the perspective of the non-Jewish society opened with the early years after the war (1918-21) which saw the rise of Arah nationalism. Palestine was seen as part of ‘Southern Syria’ and its incorporation into a large Arab state was demanded. … COMMUNITIES OF PALESTINE Palestine was populated by a mix of different peoples, divided along religious and/or ethnic lines. … Egyptians settled in parts of the country under Muhammad Ali’s rule (1831-40). Small groups of Muslim Bosnians, Algerians, Lebanese, Circassians and Turkomans also settled in Palestine. Part of this migration resulted from resettlement … http://books.google.com/books?id=1sacJ9eOyLUC&pg=PA77

… Cultural and Social Change * Population growth ( 250.000 in 1800 to 800000 in 1914) * Immigration and emigration: arrival of … and Muslim Circassians and Bosnians who immigrated to Palestine in the 1860s and 1870s from the Balkans and the … http://books.google.com/books?id=-etsKv-4V2oC&pg=PA530

“A history of Zionism,” Walter Laqueur, 2003 [639 pages]

p. 212N.Mandel, ‘Turks, Arabs and Jewish Immigration into Palestine 1882-1914’, in Albert Hourani (ed.) , Middle Eastern Affairs, 4, London, 1965, pp. 84-6 http://books.google.com/books?id=hEt5PWCTMJMC&pg=PA212p. 227During the early years of Zionist settlement the Jewish land buyers showed no more concern than the Arab effendis for the fate of the fellaheen who were evicted. Only gradually did it dawn on them that, moral considerations quite apart, they were facing a potentially explosive political issue. Later on, greater care was taken to pay compensation or to find alternative employment for those who lost their lan. But the effects of Jewish settlement on the Arab economy were minimal, as a statistical comparison shows: urbanisation in Palestine did not proceed at a faster rate than in the neighbouring Arab countries; Arab immigration into Palestine exceeded emigration from that country.. http://books.google.com/books?id=hEt5PWCTMJMC&pg=PA227

“History of Palestine: the last two thousand years,” Jacob De Haas, The Macmillan company, 1934, p. 425 [523 pages]

1860 fanatic Algerian tribes who had fought against the French and Fled to Damascus, moved from there to Safed. “The Moslems of Safed mostly descended from these Moorish settlers and from Kurds who came earlier to the city.”

The economic depression of the fallahin, especially in northern Palestine, started prior to the establishment of Mandatory rule. From the 1870s, following the expansion of ties between the Palestinian and the global economy, the penetration of urban merchants into the village economy gathered impetus. The merchants, as the owners of capital, swiftly assumed the role of finaciers for the growing needs of the fallahin… the fallahin’s economic conditions and living standards markedly declined, and the cycle of poverty in which they were caught deepened still further

RED CRESCENT As the symbol of the cross was unacceptable to Muslim countries, they chose the Red Crescent to designate their humanitarian and welfare-in-war societies parallel to the Red Cross. First to do so was Ottoman turkey, in 1876. (iran chose the Red Lion and Sun.) The arab countries followed suit in the 1920s when they became independent or semi-independent… The Ottoman Empire allowed and encouraged Muslim refugees from the Balkans (bushnaq, ie Bosnians) and the Caucasus (Circassians, Chechens) to settle in its realm.http://books.google.com/books?id=YJwsAQAAIAAJ&q=bushnaq

Bosnia—Motherland Of “Palestinians” – Manfred and Anne Lehmann The current turmoil in former Yugoslavia cannot be understood without knowledge of the region’s long history of Balkan wars, ethnic strife, religious persecution and violence. The curious aspect about all this is the existence of a Moslem pocket in the heart of Europe, and how Bosnia came to be the origin of many of today’s “Palestinians.”

Bosnia, in ancient times, was a Roman province called Illyricum; Christianity was introduced in the Middle Ages. For centuries Bosnia was a football between Hungary, Turkey and Serbia, which fought each other in unending bloody wars. In 1386 Turkey invaded Bosnia. In line with the tenets of Islam, the entire population was forced into conversion. The Pope in Rome preached in favor of war against the Turks, with little immediate effect. But from 1691 on, when Turkey was expelled from Transylvania, Turkey lost one area after another, until in 1878, at the Congress of Berlin, dominated by Otto von Bismarck of Germany, Turkey lost Bosnia to Austria. The result was a stream of Moslem refugees pouring out of Bosnia looking for haven in the Ottoman Empire, because—just as today—the Christian Serbs who had been suppressed brutally by the Moslems were out to take bloody vengeance on the Moslem Bosnians in an effort to settle very old accounts.

This migration of Moslem refugees marked a very important historic milestone in the history of Palestine. The Ottoman rulers adopted a policy of Moslem colonization. In 1878, an Ottoman law granted lands in Palestine to the Moslem refugees from Bosnia. In the Carmel region, in the Galilee, in the Plain of Sharon and in Caesarea, lands were distributed to the Moslem refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The refugees were further attracted by l2-year tax exemptions and exemption from military service.

The same colonization policy as for Bosnian Moslem refugees was also directed toward Moslem refugees from Russia—particularly from Georgia, the Crimea and the Caucasus, called Circassians and Turkmenians—leading to their settling in Abu Gosh, near Jerusalem, and in the Golan Heights. Refugees from Algeria and Egypt were also settled in Jaffa, Gaza, Jericho and the Golan.

Thus, the often-repeated Arab claim that the Palestinians are the descendants of the ancient Canaanites is just a lie. A hundred years ago many of them lived in Europe and other countries outside Palestine. The Jews, however, have had an uninterrupted presence in the Land of Israel during the 3500 years of our history. Clearly, our claim has much more validity and strength. It is not too late for this historic truth to come out and dispel the heavy clouds of vicious propaganda and lies.

The close ties between Palestinian and Bosnian Muslims—also called “Bushnaks,” their Arabic, Turkish name—was shown in World War II: The infamous mufti Hajj Amin el-Husseini, uncle of today’s PLO member Faisal el-Husseini, set up an “Islamic Legion” consisting of Bushnaks to fight for Hitler. They wanted to help their Palestinian cousins by killing as many Jews as possible so that none would be left to emigrate to the land of Israel after the war…http://www.manfredlehmann.com/sieg176.html

“1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war,” Benny Morris, Yale University Press, 2008, (524 pages), p. 85

Nonetheless, six to eight thousand volunteers reached Palestine, mainly from Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, and served alongside … The Yugoslavs… formerly members of pro-Axis Fascist groups, and Bosnian Muslims; the handful of Germans were former Nazi intelligence, Wehr- macht, and SS officers…

The following day, May 15, the Arab League, in an attempt to kill Israel in the crib, invaded the infant state on all fronts with the combined force of seven Arab States. Participating in the slaughter of approximately 6000 Jews, a mere three years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, were soldiers from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia , Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, as well as irregulars from across the Arab world.
There were reports that soldiers from the Nazi- Bosnian Muslim SS Hanzar divisions were seen on the front still wearing their distinctive Nazi uniforms. On May 15, 1947, Arab League Secretary General Abd al-Ahlman Azzam Pasha called for a jihad against the ancient Jewish State declaring, “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades. Al-Husseini concurred with Pasha when he said, “I declare a holy war, my Muslim brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”

On a pleasant Thursday in December 1948, Emilio Traubner, a correspondent for The Palestine Post, found himself near Abu Kabir, not far from Jaffa. Trenches and expended cartridges were strewn about, reminders of the fighting between units of the Irgun and local Arab forces that had taken place there seven months previously. There was a large Arab villa from where Traubner recovered a diary. It turned out to be the daily record of Yusuf Begovic of Pale, a town near Sarajevo in modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. In it Begovic had described his activities as a cook for the “Arab Army of Liberation.”

Traubner described who Begovic had been serving: “35 Yugoslav Muslims who had a good reason to expect to be among the first to occupy and loot Tel Aviv, were part of a group of some thousands who came to the Middle East to join the jihad against Israel.”

What were Yugoslav Muslims doing in Jaffa in 1948? How had they managed to get themselves all the way to the Holy Land? What had motivated them? Who had recruited them? What was the Bosnian or Albanian connection to the Palestinians, if there was one?

There was a Bosnian connection: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, had been in Bosnia in the 1940s. Had he recruited these men? What had become of them?

It turned out that in 2005 a Bosnian had given an interview in Lebanon to a Croatian newspaper and claimed to have fought in the 1948 war. The story began to crystallize.

The Long Shadow of Haj Amin

In October 1937, Haj Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Arab Higher Committee, was hiding from the British authorities in the Haram al-Sharif, the holy sanctuary atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. On October 13, disguised as a Beduin, he fled to Lebanon via Jaffa. In Lebanon he received sanctuary from the French mandatory authorities but he fled again with the outbreak of war in 1939. This time he made his way to Baghdad disguised as a woman. In Baghdad in 1940 and 1941 he increased his contacts with Germany, offering to aid the Nazis in return for their help in gaining independence for the Arab states. The Italians helped him enter Turkey, and then he made his way to Rome on October 11. He met with Mussolini and then with Hitler on November 28. After the failure of various schemes to create an Arab military unit he eventually settled for recruiting Muslim volunteers to aid the Nazis from the Balkans, Bosnia and eventually Kosovo.

In speaking to potential recruits, Husseini stressed the connections they had to the Muslim nation fighting the British throughout the world: “The hearts of all Muslims must today go out to our Islamic brothers in Bosnia, who are forced to endure a tragic fate. They are being persecuted by the Serbian and communist bandits, who receive support from England and the Soviet Union… They are being murdered, their possessions are robbed and their villages are burned. England and its allies bear a great accountability before history for mishandling and murdering Europe’s Muslims, just as they have done in the Arabic lands and in India.”

Three divisions of Muslim soldiers were recruited: The Waffen SS 13th Handschar (“Knife”) and the 23rd Kama (“Dagger”) and the 21st Skenderbeg. The Skenderbeg was an Albanian unit of around 4,000 men, and the Kama was composed of Muslims from Bosnia, containing 3,793 men at its peak. The Handschar was the largest unit, around 20,000 Bosnian Muslim volunteers. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, “These Muslim volunteer units, called Handschar, were put in Waffen SS units, fought Yugoslav partisans in Bosnia and carried out police and security duties in Hungary. They participated in the massacre of civilians in Bosnia and volunteered to join in the hunt for Jews in Croatia.” Part of the division also escorted Hungarian Jews from the forced labor in mine in Bor on their way back to Hungary. The division was also employed against Serbs, who as Orthodox Christians were seen by the Bosnian Muslims as enemies.

The Handschar division surrendered to the British army on May 8, 1945. As many as 70,000 Bosnian Muslim POWs and their families were moved by the British army to Taranto in Italy. The creation of Marshal Tito’s Yugoslavia at the end of the war meant that former Bosnian Muslim volunteers in the German SS units could not return home for fear of prosecution or internment. George Lepre, a scholar on the history of the Handschar and author of Himmler’s Bosnian Division: The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943-1945 describes their fate: “Those Bosnians who elected to remain in the camps eventually found asylum in countries throughout the Western and Arab worlds. Many of those who settled in the Middle East later fought in Palestine against the new Israeli state.”

But first they had to get to the Middle East.

The formation of the Bosnian unit in 1947

The Bosnian Muslims, usually referred to as “Yugoslavs” in period newspaper accounts as well as in intelligence reports, remained in DP camps in Italy until 1947, when it was reported in The Palestine Post on April 18 that there was a “request from the Syrian government for the transfer of 8,000 Bosnian Moslem refugees at present in Italy. Yugoslav quarters here say that the Arab League has written to all Arab states, urging them to assist these Moslem DPs, and that some financial help has already been received. Yugoslav officials say that they too want these 8,000 Moslems back, as they are the Handschar Division of the German Wehrmacht which surrendered to the British… The Yugoslavs state that they view with the gravest concern the possibility of the transfer of this group to the Middle East.”

By December 1947 a nucleus of former Handschar officers had made their way to Syria and were beginning to reconstitute their unit in Damascus. A report by Israel Baer in the Post noted that “the latest recruits to the Syrian army are members of the Bosnian Waffen SS… It is reported that they are directing a school for commando tactics for the Syrian Army.”

No doubt the fledgling Syrian army which had been born in 1946 was in need of officers and trainers with experience. Emilio Traubner, writing on December 3, 1947, noted that the International Refugee Organization (IRO) was even convinced to fund the travel of Bosnian Muslims from Italy to the Middle East so that they could find homes since they refused to be repatriated to Yugoslavia.

In January 1948 Arab agents were working to recruit Bosnians for the fight in Palestine. On February 2, it was reported that 25 Bosnian Muslims had arrived in Beirut and were moving to Damascus to join 40 other Bosnians already there. A report by Jon Kimche on February 4 further noted that up to 3,500 were being transferred to Syria to fight alongside Fawzi Kaukji’s Arab Liberation Army (ALA) in its invasion of Palestine. On March 14 a party of 67 Albanians, 20 Yugoslavs and 21 Croats led by an Albanian named Derwish Bashaco arrived by boat in Beirut from Italy. They were hosted by the Palestine Arab Bureau and made their way to Damascus to join the ALA. In the first week of April another 200 Bosnians arrived in Beirut.

A lengthy report by Claire Neikind on March 2 described the procedure by which Arab agents were recruiting volunteers among the DPs in Italy. Men between 22 and 32 were sought and in return they would receive free passage to Beirut and their families would receive maintenance. According to Neikind, 300 men had already arrived and 90 Croatian Ustashi were also making there way. Fifty-seven were sent to Amman. Between December 1 and February 20 a total of 106 were sent to Syria. Neikind noted that “as soon as their families are settled, they enter Arab military service.”

If one accepts merely the low totals from newspaper accounts it appears that there were at least 520 Bosnians, 67 Albanians and 111 Croatians in Syria or Beirut, as well as 135 Bosnians on their way to Egypt and 57 Bosnians in Jordan. Thus 890 volunteers from Yugoslavia and Albania were in the Middle East by April 1948, before Israel’s declaration of independence on May 15, 1948.

Upon arrival the volunteers found their way to a camp at Katana, a military base west of Damascus that the Syrian army had provided for use by the Arab Liberation Army being assembled to invade Palestine. Here they met their commander, Fawzi Kaukji for the first time. Kaukji, 58, was a former Ottoman soldier who had fought in the Arab Revolt. Hagana intelligence estimated as many as 4,000 volunteers had joined his army.

In December of 2005, Hassan Haidar Diab, a journalist in Bosnia, was able to locate Kemal Rustomovic, a Bosnian who had served with the Yugoslav volunteers. He claimed to have been a member of the Arab Salvation Army where 150 of his fellow Bosnians served under a Bosnian officer named Fuad Sefkobegovic.

The Role of the Bosnians in the War of Independence

Since the fall of 1947 Arab forces under Abdel Khader Husseini and other locals had harassed Jewish traffic and supplies moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. A mixed Bosnian-Arab unit of the ALA had been dispatched to aid in the siege of Jerusalem and this unit found itself embroiled in the battle for Castel between April 3 and 8, 1948. This battle was part of the Hagana’s Operation Nahshon which was intended to relieve the siege of Jerusalem. It is not clear what became of the Bosnians who fought at Castel. Some may have retired to Ramallah, where it was reported on April 16 that Muslim foreigners including Yugoslavs had taken over the best hotels and “molested” the local population.

The next battle that the Bosnian units participated in was at Jaffa between April 25 and May 5. Jaffa had been allotted to the Arab state in the UN partition plan, but it was surrounded by territory allotted to the Jewish state. The battle began when the Irgun launched an attack on the city. According to the Hagana, there were 400 “Yugoslavs” and 200 Iraqis defending Jaffa. On April 28, Michel Issa, the Christian Arab commander of the Ajnadin Battalion, received orders from Kaukji to move from the Jerusalem foothills to relieve the siege of Jaffa. On the same day, Hagana intelligence noted that there were 60 “Yugoslavs” among the defenders of Jaffa. Issa arrived in Jaffa on April 29 ; the commander of Jaffa, Maj. Adil Najmuddin, deserted the city on May 1, leaving Issa and his Yugoslavs. According to Issa’s telegram to Kaukji, “Adil left [the] city by sea with all [the] Iraqis and Yugoslavs.” Prior to their departure the Yugoslavs had been billeted at local homes and their unit even included a cook.

Kemal Rustomovic recalled in his interview that he had first been at Nablus, then Jaffa and finally at Jenin. Between the evacuation of the Yugoslavs by sea from Jaffa and their reunion with the ALA, the State of Israel was born on May 15, 1948. On the same day five Arab armies invaded Israel and the war became much wider.

The ALA became a disorganized and largely spent force by the time it saw fighting again around Nazareth again in July. During the fighting in the North, Kaukji’s army of 2,500 men was reduced to only 800 and it was driven from Nazareth into northern Galilee. Rustomovic was one of these men according to his interview. The Post reported that the ALA still included “Yugoslavs.” On July 18 the Post reported that the British government’s intelligence had acted to “systematically sabotage [the] Palestine partition scheme” and provided as evidence the fact that England was aware of the presence of Bosnian volunteers in Syria.

During the fighting in October the IDF conquered the entire Galilee and parts of Southern Lebanon. A report on November 1, detailing the capture of the Galilee, noted that some “Yugoslavs” had been captured during the fighting that had driven the ALA and the Lebanese army from Palestine and actually found the IDF in Lebanon.

The Bosnians and the 1948 war, strange bedfellows?

It is not known what became of the Bosnians who served with the Arab forces in the 1948 war. Rustomovic, who was born in the village of Kuti in central Bosnia in 1928, joined the Lebanese army in 1950. He served his adopted country for 30 years, married a local woman and had seven daughters and five sons with her. He was granted Lebanese citizenship, unlike the Palestine refugees who fled to Lebanon, and retired from the army in 1980. According to him, none of the Bosnians who had served in the SS ever returned to Yugoslavia. Some ended up in the US, Australia and Canada. It is assumed that some also settled in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East. Today many would be in their 80s and 90s and it is doubtful that many of them survive.

In the 1990s during the Balkan wars, Arabs would journey to the Balkans to participate in war between Bosnians and Serbs. In a strange twist they would be repaying the debt incurred when 900 or more Bosnian Muslims gave up their homes and past to come to the Middle East to serve the Muslim Arab cause. The involvement of these Bosnians may be seen as an early version of the linkage of Muslim conflicts throughout the world. This has gained increased exposure lately due to the involvement of foreign Muslim volunteers in the Algerian, Lebanese, Kashmiri, Sudanese and Afghani conflicts among others.

They never had the opportunity to learn that at the time of the First Aliyah (the 1880s) the country was almost empty (and practically a desert to boot). Most of the Arabs who now claim Israel are descendants of those who flooded into the land in our wake, to enjoy the prosperity created by the ‘invaders’. You only need to consider some of the local Arab surnames to see where their origins lie: Masri (Misr-Egypt), Hidjazi, Ajami (Ajam = Iran), Shami (Sham = Damascus), Haurami, etc. etc…

…Yet when the Romans first conquered the Jewish kingdom, they found only Jews. The majority of today’s Palestinians are descendants of Arabs who migrated after 1840 mainly from Egypt and Syria. Even the family name of the first Palestinian Prime Minister of Jordan bears this out: Masri means “Egyptian.”

[…]Geographers had long concluded that it was improbable “that any but a small part of the present Arab population of Palestine is descended from the ancient inhabitants of the land”; indeed, according to their analysis, Palestine was “peopled by the drifting populations of Arabia, and to some extent by the backwash of its harbors.” Additionally, the Ottomans settled Muslim populations as a buffer against Bedouin attacks; Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian ruler, brought Egyptian colonists with his army in the 1830s. It is noteworthy that the common Palestinian name al-Masri, used by a clan in Nablus, literally means “the Egyptian.”

Recent research from the Hebrew university shows that most of those Arabs who fled in 1948 had actually come from families who had come to pre-state Israel as a result of the Zionist revival. This has been shown by tracking the origin of the surnames of the people who fled. For example, certain surnames indicate the towns in North Africa where these settlers came from. It is instructive to note that Arafat himself is reputedly of Egyptian origin, as is the now-discredited “palestinian academic” Edward Said.

The root of the conflict is Arab rejectionism, rooted in the dictatorial nature of every single Arab regime. Israel has become the scapegoat with which the Arab rulers may deflect the attention of the disgruntled masses from their own oppression, poverty, corruption and primitive way of life. By portraying Israel as the root of all Arab ills, these rulers have continued to spend billions of dollars on weaponry and palaces, while the masses remain hungry and illiterate.http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/2242

The Arab leadership encouraged Arab immigration to Palestine even as late as 1947

Middle Eastern studies: Volume 22 – 1986 – Snippet view – Page 339

The Mufti asked the Arab states to adhere to the boycott call. In June 1947, the League’s Political Committee discussed the Mufti’s request and decided to adopt the Arab stand at the UN, and to encourage Arab immigration to Palestine. It was agreed that the Arab position should be made known to the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). League representatives appeared before UNSCOP in Beirut at its last day of hearings. In an open session,

How odd that such last names as al-Masri (the Egyptian,), al-Djazair (the Algerian), el-Mughrabi (the Moroccan), al-Yamani (the Yemenite) and even al-Afghani are so common among those claiming to be “Palestinians.”

There are villages populated wholly by settlers from other portions of the Turkish Empire in the 19th century. There are villages of Bosnians, Circassians, and Egyptians.
-Parkes, James William, History of the Peoples of Palestine, Hammondsworth, Great Britain, 1970, p. 212.

There are very large contingents from the Mediterranean countries, especially Armenia, Greece, and Italy, Turkomen settlers, a fairly large Afghan colony, Motawila, immigrants from Persia, tribes of Kurds, a Bosnian colony, Circassian settlements, a large Algerian element, Sudanese…
-Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1911 ed.

In 1860, entire Algerian tribes immigrated en masse to Safed. The Muslims of Safed, are “mostly descended from these Moorish settlers and from Kurds that came earlier to the city.”
-De Haas, Jacob, History of Palestine, The Last Two Thousand Years, New York, 1934, p. 425.

“I learn of the arrival of about 6,000 of the Beni Sukhr Arabs at Tiberias who are very seldom seen this side of the Jordan.”
-British Consul James Finn in apers Relating to the Distubances in Syria, no. 2, June 1860, p. 35.

“The Arabs would have sat in the dark forever had not the Zionist engineers harnessed the Jordan river for electrification. Now they swarm into Palestine in seeking the light.”
– Winston Churchill, 1922 “A Peace to End All Peace”

“This illegal [Arab] immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.”

-Palestine Royal Commission Report, London: 1937

“So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied until their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population.”
-Winston Churchill, 1939.

MV: “Recently the Israeli government forcibly expelled hundreds of children solely because there are not Jewish.”

Liar. They were deported, along with their parents, because their parents had overstayed their visas. Any country in the world does the same thing.

MV: “Israel set up a propaganda hospital in Haiti after the devastating earthquake as part of its “Brand Israel” campaign hoping that a phony show of sympathy will make people forget about Israeli killing and occupation of millions of Palestinians. Only the American media, naturally, went along with the ploy. After the cameras left, Israel entirely fled from Haiti.”

Another lie. After the Israeli field hospital left–a hospital dedicated to emergency treatment rather than long-term convalescence–(after being the wonder of the other delegations for its equipment and expertise in emergency medicine), a large group of Israeli teachers, social workers and aid workers arrived to treat trauma and rebuild schools, they’re still there. A contingent of the Israeli police also spent six months in Haiti at that government’s request, to help preserve law and order. They returned with the highest compliments of the Haitian government.

MV: “The biggest infiltrators are the occupying Zionists who came, conquered and continue to oppress.”

The biggest lie of all. Many Arabs identify their origins by their family names. Here are some of the most common family names among the “Palestinians”:

“Abu Sitta” = In Arabic’ Abu means father and sitta means six. Translated it actually means father of six. (The Abu Sitta family primarily received this name because around the year 1700, a well known knight of the large Al-Tarabeen tribe always had six slaves (i.e. fedawyah, bodyguards), 3 on each side, with him. They were with him wherever he went, day or night. Hence the name “ABU SITTA.” = Egypt (Bedouins) “Salman Abu Sitta “.)

Even Yasser Arafat, the most famous “Palestinian” and leader of the P.L.O terrorist organization, was not native to Judea. He called himself a “Palestinian refugee” but spoke Arabic with an Egyptian accent. He was born in 1929 Cairo, Egypt. He served in the Egyptian army, studied in the University of Cairo, and lived in Cairo until 1956! His full name was Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini. “Al-Qudwa” tribe origin?

Yasser Arafat also proudly stated in his authorized biography that, “If there is any such thing as a Palestinian people, it is I, Yasser Arafat, who created them.”

[…] OK. Let’s talk about displaced people. The Land of Israel (whom the gentiles call Palestine) was a Jewish country since the arrival of Abraham. There was always a Jewish presence there. In the years 70 CE and 135 CE, the Romans forcefully removed large numbers of the Jewish population from the LOI and brought them to Rome as slaves.

Nevertheless, the LOI continued as a Jewish country according to G-d’s promises. During the 4th century, the Roman Empire became Christian, and Rome turned the LOI into a Byzantine country in which non-Jewish were brought in and settled by Rome. During the 5th century, there was an economic depression in the Eastern Empire and some of the Jewish population moved to neighboring countries to earn a living. At the same time, Rome encouraged more and more gentile Christians to take up residence in the country. Still, the majority of the population was Jewish.

During the 7th century, the newly converted Arab Moslems came up out of the Arabian Penninsula and conquered the LOI, driving out the Byzantines. Many of the native population, both Jewish and non-Jewish were forcefully converted to Islam and the country was forcefully ARABIZED. Those Jews still living there had pressure put upon them to become Moslems. Some did become Moslems and lost their Jewish identity. Those individuals of the population that became Moslem were ARABIZED. That is, they took up the Arab language and for all purposes were acculturated to “look like” Arabs.

From the 7th century onwards, LOI was an ARAB-SPEAKING country. That does not mean that the people living there were “real Arabs”. They were not. They were, in fact, descendants of the original Jewish population and of the Greek speaking population that the Byzantines imported to Christianiize the Land.

Towards the end of the first Christian millenium, the Land was under the control of the Turkish Moslems. From the time immediately following the First Crusade, the Land fell into a sad state. The Turks misuded it economically and ecologically. A once fertile Land under Jewish rule now became a forrest-denuded, malarial swamp. Many people, both Jews and non-Jews left. Most of them were gentiles. The population thinned out. Hardly anyone lived there. The Land was administrated by absentee Turkish landlords. It had became a non-productive province and the Turks didnt care one fig about it. They had more lucrative and productive lands to administer. Starting in the 1500s thru the 1900s, Jews from Europe returned in waves to the LOI. They found a small non-Jewish population scattered here and there throughout the Land. These people were of various nationalities. None of them called themsleves “Palestinians”. There was no such entity. The Land was still ARABIZED and the returning Jews were loyal to the Turkish masters. They did everything possible to restore the Land because they loved in a way that no gentile inhabitants had. They cleared much of the swampland and planted trees and made the Land fertile again. The Turks gave them no thanks. The gentile inhabitants had never done anything like that. They had been content to just let the Land go to hell.

As the Land became productive under the hands of the returning Jews, it became more viable and economically productive. The presence of the Jews and their productivity created jobs. Gentile Arabs from the surrounding lands began to pour into LOI to finf work. The Turks encouraged this because they didn’t want the Land to become “too Jewish.” Beginning in the 19th century, the Turks encouraged Moslems from various countries to come to the LOI, promoising them free land if they did. Many Moslems took up the offer, many of them from BOSNIA came and settled there. THESE WERE EUROPEAN MOSLEMS THAT TOOK ON LOCAL ARAB COLORING AND ASSIMILATED INTO THE NON-JEWISH POPULATION, THEREBY BECOMING “ARABS”.

The Turks then began the policy of restricting the Jews to certain areas of the Land, giving the more favored area to Moslems. Much of this area consisted of the present day Judea and Samaria, the so-called “West Bank of Palestine”. After the First World War, when the British conquered the Turks, they took the LOI away from the Turks and made it a British “protectorate”. They continued to call the Land “Palestine” and called EVERY INHABITANT IN IT, BOTH JEW AND GENTILE, “PALESTINIANS”. That name was an English invention just as the “ARAB” inhabitants of the Land had been a TURKISH INVENTION. In those 2 centuries, 19th and 20th, NO ONE WAS DISPLACED EXCEPT JEWS!!!

The British then proceded to do what they have done everywhere they have gone, divide and conquer. They promised both the Jews and the non-Jews that the Land would be given to their communities, but because they were very interested in oil and had a basically anti-Jewish attitude, they favored the “Arabs”. The first thing they did was stop all Jewish immigration into the country while they allowed and encouraged gentile immigration. Nationalism was on the rise. The non-Jewish Arabized population of the LOI wanted a national identity and they were content to take the name and identity imposed upon them by the Turks and the British, namely “Palestinians”. The Jews did not need to take that identity. They had their own G-d given identity.

The leadership of the “Palestinian” nationalist movement needed a rallying focus, so they used the commonality of religion. Islam became the focus of “Palestinianism”. In 1929, a pogrom was organized in Hebron. Every member of the Jewish community there was murdered, man, woman, child. The British knew who the instigators were. They did nothing to apprehand them. In 1936, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem called for another pogrom against the various Jewish communities of the LOI. By that time, the Jews of the LOI had obtained weapons for their own self defense. They fought back. The British moved through all the Jewish areas and confiscated all weapons they found in the hands of Jews. They left the weapons of the Arabs alone.

It was a known fact that the British did not like the Jews because the Jews refused to act like good colonial third world natives. They considered themselves the equals of the British. The British could not stand it. They were used to treating all colonials as second class citizens. The Jews said to them, “We are not natives. We are as good as you.” The British did not like that at all. They could depend on the Arabs to act like good little dark skinned boys. That made them comfortable. AND the surrounding Arab countries had OIL!!! Why irritate them by irritating their co-religionists in the LOI?

In order to placate the Arabs, the British told the Jews that they were NOT going to hand over the “whole land of Palestine” to them, only the “west bank of Palestine.” Do you know how the “Palestinian leadership rewarded the British?” They signed a deal with the Nazi Germans to advance the German cause in the Middle East. War between Germany and Britain was immanent and everyone knew it. The Germans promised the Arabs that if they would ally themselves with Germany, they (the Germans) would solve the “Jewish problem” for the Arabs at the war’s conclusion. The Jews remained loyal to the British government. It didn’t matter one whit. In order to gain back the Arab sympathies on the eve of war, the British assured the Arabs that no further Jewish immigration into the Land would be allowed. Ships carrying Jews from Europe tried to enter “Palestine”. The British refused them entry and forced them to return to a Europe where the gas chambers awaited them.

WW II broke out. The Arab sympathy was with Germany. They prayed for a German victory. Anwar Sadat, later to become President of Egypt, became a German spy and anti-British terrorist. The Grand Mufti was to be put under arrest by the British but he escaped andfled to Germany, spending the duration of the war there. During the war itself, Jews tried to enter “Palestine” to escape from the Nazis. The British turned them away. After the war, the British continued their policy of not letting Jews enter even though many DISPLACED European Jews had no where else to go.

At this time, the UN wanted the British to give up their mandate on “Palestine”. The British further renegged and told the Jews that only part of the “West Bank” would be theirs. They would have to share the area with the non-Jewish residents. The Jews agreed. The Arabs did not. THEY WANTED THE WHOLE LAND FOR THEMSELVES.

The surrounding Arab countries ] told the non-Jewish residents of the Land that when the British left, their armies would come in and drive the Jews into the Sea. The non-Jewish population was encouraged to evacuate the Land in order to open the way for the Arab armies to operate. Many of them did just that, hoping to come back immanently to a land JUDENREIN. The Bitish left in May, 1948. Israel declared itself a state in the truncated area that the British had left them. Five Arab countries attacked Israel. The Jordanian army moved into the area of the “West Bank” that was to become the “Palestinian” state, and instantly annexed it to Jordan. No one protested. Jordan ruled the “Palestinian” state for 19 years. No one protested and said that the “Palestinians” were displaced and had to have their own country.

For 19 years the Jordanians treated their West Bank people like second class citizens. They were denied 3 basic rights. They were not allowed to open factories in the west bank, they were not allowed to build universities on the west bank, no west bank “Arab” was allowed to have a driver’s license. No one protested. The Jordanians denied Jews access to their holy places in Jerusalem. No one protested. The Jordanians took tomb stones from Jewish cemetaries and turned them into lutrines. No one protested.

In May, 1967, Egypt and Syria got together and declared war on Israel, threatening to drive the Jews into the Sea. No one protested. King Hussein of Jordan called upon his “Arabs” in the west bank to get knives and kill every Jew that they found. The Israelis warned the Jordanians that if they entered the war, Israel would take the west bank away fomr them. Jordan entered the war and lost the west bank that it had illegally annexed 19 years earlier. The Israelis found evidence of inhumane treatment of people in the West Bank by the Jordanians. No one protested. Everybody was busy protesting against the Israeli “aggressor” and the “poor displaced Palestinians”.

Some people have all the propaganda luck. The bleeding heart liberal media went anti-Israel to sell more newspapers. The Soviet Union took up the “Palestinian” cause to win the Arabs over to their side in the cold war. From 1967 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Israel acted as the best ally of the United States, handing over the latest in captured Soviet weaponry to America, asking nothing in return. Israel was repaied by the anti-semitic State Dept of the USA by being pressured to give back territory to the “poor Palestinians”. Meanwhile one thing remains to be told. In 1948, when Israel bacame a state, there were Arabs living there. The Israelis granted them full citizenship. No Arab was asked to leave Israel.

That same year, Arab countries, including Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Lybia, and others KICKED OUT THEIR JEWISH CITIZENS AND MADE THEM LEAVE ALL THEIR EARTHLY BELONGINGS BEHIND! No one protested.

You call yourself a Christian and you grieve for the poor displaced Palestinians? You are just one more gentile hoodwinked by the Arab propaganda mill, abetted by the anti-Israel media who want to sell newspapers, and the Oil company whores who think oil is more important than justice. Cry your crocodile tears, sister. Don’t expect any sympathy from me. The fact that you allow your sympathy for the poor mistreated “non-jews” of the Middle East to over-ride your concern for Biblical prophecy tells me a lot about the so-called Christians in this country who claim to be Bible believers. You are Bible believers so long as it is not good for the Jews. And the hell with real justice and G-d’s word.

ADDENDUM June 22, 2003 – Incidently, there never was a national or geographical entity called “Palestine” in the historical sense that we usually ascribe to nations or geography. “Palestine” was the designation given to the Land Of Israel by the Romans when they incorporated it into their Empire as a province. They named it after the Philistines, the traditional enemies of Israel, in order to humiliate their new Jewish subjects. Since the Arabs living in the Land Of Israel insist that they are the descendants of the ancient Caananites, why don’t they refer to themselves as Caananites rather than Philistines? Arab humor: Take my hostage, please!

The Semitic radical p-l-s or p-l-sh is the etymological base of the name of those who were called “Plishtim” (Philistines) in the Hebrew Bible. The area they inhabited, Pleshet, was the coastal strip south of Yaffo (Jaffa). They were probably people of Greek extraction, called the “Sea Peoples” who invaded the area sometime around 1300 – 1100 BCE (See: TOLDOR THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE AND THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD, compiled and prepared by Abraham Lebanon, Jerusalem 1985 ). The Plishtim are not, at any rate, the ancestors of the modern-day Arabs who refer to themselves as “Palestinians”.

…because the ‘Palestinians’ by their own admission are a fiction created by that Arab narrative.

The term “Palestina” was invented by the Roman emperor Hadrian. The Romans wanted to rename Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) after the Philistines, the longtime enemy of the Jews. Hadrian believed that by renaming the Jewish homeland after the Jews’ archenemy, he would be able to forever break the bond between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people.

But even the name of the Philistines, from which the term “Palestine” was adopted, is completely alien to the Land of Israel.

The name Philistines in Hebrew is plishtim, which comes from the Hebrew verb polshim (foreign invaders).

Arabs only came to the Land of Israel in large numbers after the Jews returned in the 20th century and started to rebuild the nation, thereby creating economic and employment opportunities for Arab immigrants.

Prior to 1870, when Jews started to return to the Holy Land in large numbers, there were fewer than 100,000 Arabs living in what is today the State of Israel – including Yesha (the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District).

This small number of nomadic, tribal Arabs who lived in the Holy Land before the modern Jewish return never considered themselves to be a separate people or nation.

The Arabs who lived in the Land of Israel were not “Palestinians” but Arabs – part of a huge Arab people with 22 very large independent nations that control one-ninth of the land mass on the planet Earth…

Palestinian ARABS have NOTHING to do with the Philistines of the BIBLE: Palestinian ARABS are simply ARABS. The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. Mizraim begot Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, and Casluhim (from whom came the Philistines and Caphtorim). Gen 10.6, 10.13-14

The Philistines were a non-Semitic people (neither Arab nor Jew) descended from Ham’s son Mizraim. They invaded Israel from either Crete or Egypt.

Palestinian nationalism is the biggest scam in history. The Arabs are not native to Palestine. They’re native to Arabia. Why do you think so many ancient Palestinians have names like Al Masri and Al Mugrabhi? Is the arabic language native to Palestine? The ancient Palestinians are people that migrated from Egypt, Syria and elsewhere to find jobs that the Zionists created as they were building up desolate and barren Palestine 1870-1948. And Arabs continue to migrate to Israel to this day!

A little history seems in order here.
First and foremost we should remember that Israel did not invade those territories, the Arabs did.

Second, that Israel has occupied that land for over 3500 years.
Third, the racists are the Arabs who want all the Jews out of the land they claim, while 1.2 million Muslim arabs live at peace in Israel.
But let us come up a few thousand years and look at this past century.

First off, the only “arabs” who owned land in Israel were the [non-Arab Muslims] Turkish Pashas and Egyptian offendi’s.
The arabs that were there were for the most part share croppers.

There is an excellent Historic novel about this and the arabs flight from Israel and it is called “The Haj” by Leon Uris.

Most of the arabs in Israel entered starting in 1922.

Hardly any one lived in Israel prior to that from 1886 to post 1915.
There was a series of 6 locust plauges which just about wiped the country out. Some 40,000 people died of starvation in the 1915 plauge.

If any one would like to see it from an original source, I have a copy of the Dec 1915 issue of National Geographic and will send a copy of the article to any one who requests it of me at my address below.

In about 1885 the first large scale immigration into Israel occured. Yes it was by Arabs, but these arabs were Jews.
Some 3000 Jews left Yemen when the goverment of Yemen declaired that all children of Jewish families were to be taken from them and raised as Muslims. The Yemenite Jews fled, settled in Israel and started the first collective farm there.

Now as more ‘Zionist money poured into Israel to support the Jews through the locust plauges, more arabs also poured in to get the jobs that were now available. Most of them make more in a month than they made as tennant farmers so they abondoned the farms and went to work for the Jews.This did not make the arab land owners very happy.
Most arabs that entered Israel settled near Jewish communities by a factor of 10 to 1.

In 1922 a pipeline was started. This brought a huge influx of arabs into Palistine EY. (That was the proper name as used by the british on their stationary, not Palistine.) Some 300,000 entered legally between 1922 and 1942.Another 300,000 entered illegally across the desert.There were not many controls except at the ports keeping the Jews out.
If you look at stamps from Palistine EY at the time, you will lfind that Hebrew is one of the languages on the stamp, proving the land had a large Jewish population and the name Palistine EY = Eretz Yisroel.

So the fact is that most of the so called Palistinians are rather late in entering Israel and are not native to the land.
Now the next big migration into Israel by Arabs occured after the 1948 war. UNRA built refugee camps for the Arabs. They were supplied with housing, food, money, medical care and many other things they did not have before. The only requirement to enter a camp was that you had resided in Israel for 2 prior years.Comparitively, the living the camps was pretty good at the time, so suddenly arabs from all the neighboring countries became Palistinian refugees, There was a large surge of Arabs into the country. Hey what would you expect Free food.

Oh I almost forgot. Palistinians. Prior to about 1968 if you called any of these arabs Palistinians, they would have spit in your face. They called themselves “Southern Syrians” for the most part. At least all that knew called themselves that.
Another note (If you called an Egyptian an arab, you were liable to get punched in the teeth. My lab parner in college was an egyptian. He make it clear to me, arab was a curse word.)

So you see these so called Palistinians are not native to the area. Basically they are squatters trying to take over another country just as they took over Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and many other middle eastern countries…

Speaking of history, I want to raise another historical prospect that no one seems to talk about.
The Arabs are not native to “Palestine.” They Arabs are native to Arabia, now known as Saudi Arabia.

The only way they got to this current disuputed area is by… guess what? Jihads, when they swept across the middle east, conquering various cities, brutalizng the natives, and forcibly converting many to Islam.

Damascus? Was once a Christian City.
Egypt? The native Egyptians, today called the “Copts” are Christians, and second-class citizens to the Muslim Arab rulers. (But don’t expect any of the Israel critics to get upset about the stratification of Egypt. They never shed any tears for the persecution of the Copts.)

And Jerusalem too, which was controlled by Christians, with some Jews remaining (as there has been a Jewish presence there for millenium) was also conquered, Churches burned and turned to mosques, dhimmi laws enforced.

So tell me… why is the Palestinian Arab more “native” to the region when he got it by conquering and pillaging, then the Jews or the Zionists? He too got there the same way you accuse the Zionist… an accusation which does not even hold water, when you study the prices and money spent when the Zionist bought tracks of land.

In his State of The Union speech, President Bush included Hamas, Hizbullah and the Islamic Jihad as part of the terrorist network, with whom the United States is at war.

From the early 1970s until Rabin and Arafat signed the 1993 Oslo Peace Accord, Arafat was considered a terrorist. His PLO was on the US list of terrorist nations or organizations. Why the change in 1993?

One of Israel’s conditions before even entering a peace process with Arafat was that Arafat renounce terrorism. Arafat made this promise. But he broke it again and again and again. Now in 2002 Arafat’s terrorism is at an all time high.

The US perspective began to change after September 11. With the declaration of war on terrorism, the US has been pressuring Arafat to not only stop terrorism but to dismantle the terrorist organizations among the Palestinians. Since Arafat’s Palestinian Authority was caught smuggling 50 tons of highly sophisticated weapons from the terrorist state of Iran, the Pentagon wants the US to sever all ties with Arafat.

But when the terrorism issue is concluded, the US expects Israel and the Palestinians to return to the peace negotiations. Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated that he expects Israel to give all or most of the West Bank to the Palestinians. Evidently Arab oil not historic-rights is the bottom line of much Middle East policy. Not all of Israel’s actions are correct. We grieve for innocent Jews or Arabs who are killed. But the Lord is angry with the nations who divide Israel’s Land. Joel 3:1,2

Brief History

Jews lived in their Land for 1700 years virtually uninterrupted. Then the Roman destruction of their polity in AD 70 marked God’s temporary rejection and chastening. The Jewish population of over 3 million was decimated by slaughter and expulsion. The Arabs conquered and dominated the Land for over 300 years beginning in AD 640, yet the Jews remained the largest minority.

The noted Arab historian Khaldun (called one of the greatest historians of all time by Arnold Toynbee) observed that as late as A.D. 1400 the Land still was permeated with Jewish culture and customs. Nearly 300 years after Arab rule ended, there was still no evidence of Palestinian roots or established culture.

Thus an Arab historian, who happens to be one of the greatest historians of all time, demolished the claim that there is an uninterrupted Palestinian culture dating back to AD 640.

James Parke’s exhaustive work WHOSE LAND observes, “It is not until the Turkish period, AD 1517-1917, that it [the Land God gave Israel] acquired a substantial Arab population.” How? By Arabs emigrating from Arab nations into the Land, which then became utterly desolate. Thus the claim of a thriving verdant Palestinian culture since AD 700 defies Scripture and history.

During these centuries the total combined population of Moslems, Christians and Jews was less than 200,000. Compared, therefore, with the previous Jewish population of over 3 million, the land did become relatively “desolate of man and beast.” Jeremiah 3:10 Notice, there was a continual nucleus of Jews in the Land.

Why did the Land of Israel become a barren wasteland? The pro-Arab British Palestine Royal Commission in 1937 completely placed the blame on the destructive life style of the Arabs who wandered in and out of the Land.

Who Are The Palestinians?

Ezekiel 36:1-12 predicted that the “heathen (people) round about” the Land of Israel would render it desolate. Who are the “people round about?” Look at a map. Israel is a little island surrounded by a sea of Arab nations. Arab people who immigrated to the Land of Israel desolated the Land, fulfilling Ezekiel 36. The so-called Palestinians are simply Arabs from Syria, Egypt, Iraq and other Arab countries that immigrated to the Land.

How desolate did the land become? In 1738 Thomas Shaw observed a land of “barrenness…. from want of inhabitants.” In 1835 Alphonse de Lamartine wrote, “Outside the city of Jerusalem, we saw no living object, heard no living sound. . .a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country . . . The tomb of a whole people.” In 1867 Mark Twain wrote, “Palestine is desolate and unlovely. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies….”

In 1857, the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, reported, “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.” What a remarkable confirmation of the Biblical prediction that during Israel’s period of punishment and dispersion, the Lord would cause the Land to become desolate of man and beast (Jeremiah 33:10). By 1857 it was just waiting for “a body of population!” In the Lord’s providence this needed body of population—the Jewish people—began to return after 1878. God’s favor was now returning.

Verses 8-12 reveal the Jewish people would return in mass and their Land would again return to the fertility of old. But from 1878 onward, the influx of “the people round about”—the Arabs—accelerated. Why? The Jews returned to build an infrastructure for a new Jewish State. This created jobs and the Arabs rushed in to take advantage of the new economy.

Both British Prime Minister MacDonald and President Roosevelt confirm this flood of Arab immigration since 1918. In 1946 Bartley C. Crum, a United States Government observer, noted that tens of thousands of Arabs had entered Palestine “because of this better life—and they were still coming.” Some writers have claimed that 75 percent of the Arab population were either immigrants or descendants of immigrants into the Land after 1882.

Arabs in the Holy Land did not adopt the Palestinian identity until the 1960s. They referred to themselves as Southern Syrians. In 1956, Ahmed Shukairy, the first head of the PLO observed to the Security Council, “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.” TIME magazine reported. “It was Arafat who made the intellectual leap [1964] to a definition of the Palestinians as a distinct people; he articulated the cause, organized for it, fought for it and brought it to the world’s attention.” (http://www.bible411.com/newsletters/nb200203.htm) But God promised the Land to Israel, not the so-call Palestinians. The Peace Process will end in an Israeli-Arab war in which the Arabs will be decisively defeated and Israel will acquire parts of Jordan and Southern Lebanon. Isaiah 11:14; Zephaniah 2:4-12

The Problem—Arab Elitism

Saudi Arabia is in favor of the war on terrorism but unhappy that the US is waging war against Islamic Afghanistan with its large Arab population. In fact, many wealthy Saudi princes have been financing Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorists. The Arab oil rich nations have warned Bush not to attack Iraq in its war on terrorism. Why? Simply because Iraq is Arab. Never mind Iraq’s long record of terrorism. The prison on the US Guantanamo Base, incarcerates Taliban and al-Qaeda captives. Over 100 are Saudis. Saudi Arabia is demanding the Saudis be turned over to them for trial. Some how it is demeaning to the Arab world for Arabs with Islamic fervor to be judged by non-Arabs. Some might say, infidels. Remember the terror attack on the US military base in Saudi Arabia? Many US personnel were killed. Saudi Arabia restricted the scope of US investigation so that the Arab terrorists have never been apprehended.

Why do Saudi Arabia and the other Arab countries back Arafat and his Palestinians? Even though at times they might cringe at his extreme terrorism, the bottom line is the Palestinians are Arabs—part of the Arab Elite.

There is a sharp disagreement among non-Islamic writers and even Islamic clerics on the meaning of the word Jihad in the Koran. One source of controversy is at what point of events in his personal history did Mohammad write and apply certain Jihad verses. But none can deny that the military expansion of the Arab Empire was premised on Holy Jihad.

Now 10 prominent Islamic clerics of differing theological backgrounds, including the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, have publicly declared that Arafat’s terrorism directed at civilians, including woman and children, is not Holy Jihad.

One of these Islamic clerics, Sheikh Professor Abdul Hadi Palazzi, in a video interview proves that the designation “Palestinian people” is a political deception and that Arafat’s application of Holy Jihad to his terrorist killing of civilians is a violation of the Koran.

Whenever the issue concerning the Jewish population in Israel is discussed, the idea that Jews are “returning back” to their Homeland after almost two millennia of exile is taken for granted. It is true that such is the case for the largest number of Jews, but not for all of them. It is not correct to say that the whole Jewish nation has been in exile. The long exile, known as Diaspora, is a documented fact that proves the legitimacy of the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel, and was the consequence of the Jewish Wars of independence from the Roman Empire. If “Palestinians” allegedly are the historic inhabitants of the Holy Land, why did they not fight for independence from Roman occupation as Jews did? How is it possible that not a single Palestinian leader heading for a revolt against the Roman invaders is mentioned in any historic record? Why there is not any Palestinian rebel group mentioned, as for example the Jewish Zealots? Why every historic document mentions the Jews as the native inhabitants, and the Greeks, Romans and others as foreigners dwelling in Judea, but not any Palestinian people, neither as native nor as foreigner? After the last Jewish War in the 2nd century c.e., the Roman emperor Hadrian sacked Jerusalem in 135 c.e. and changed her name into Ælia Capitolina, and the name of Judæa into Palæstina, in order to erase the Jewish identity from the face of the Earth. Most of the Jews were expelled from their own land by the Romans, a fact that determined the beginning of the great Diaspora. Nevertheless, small groups of Jews remained in the province then renamed “Palestine”, and their descendants dwelled in their own country continuously throughout generations until the Zionist pioneers started on the mass return in the XIX century. Therefore, the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel is justified not only by an old Biblical Promise, but also by a permanent presence of Jews as the only autochthonous ethnic community existing in the Holy Land. Along the centuries and under different dominations, the “Palestinian” Jews did never submit to assimilation but conserved their spiritual and cultural identity, as well as their links with other Jewish communities in the Middle East. The continuous flow of Mizrachim (Oriental) and Sephardim (Mediterranean) Jews to the Holy Land contributed to support the existence of the Jewish population in the area. This enduring Jewish presence in the so-called Palestine preceded many centuries the arrival of the first Arab conqueror.

Even though Jerusalem has been off-limits to Jews in different periods (since Romans banned all Jews to enter the City), many of them settled in the immediate proximities and in other towns and villages of the Holy Land. A Jewish community was established at Mount Zion. The Roman and subsequent Byzantine rule were oppressive; Jews were prevented from praying at the Kotel, where the Holy Temple once existed. The Sassanid Persians took control over Jerusalem in 614 c.e. allied with the local Jews, but five years later the City fell again under Byzantine control, although it was an ephemeral rule because in 638 c.e. Jerusalem was captured by the caliph Omar. That was the first time that an Arab leader set foot in the Holy City, inhabited by non-Arab peoples (Jews, Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks and other Christian communities). After centuries of Roman-Byzantine oppression, the Jews welcomed the Arab conquerors with the hope that their conditions would improve. The Arabs found a strong Jewish identity in Jerusalem and the surrounding land; Jews were living in every district of the country and on both sides of the Jordan. Indeed, the “Palestinians” that were historically dwelling in the Holy Land were no other than the Jews! Towns like Ramallah, Yericho and Gaza were almost purely Jewish by that time. The Arabs, not having a name of their own for this region, adopted the Latin name “Palæstina”, that they translated into Arabic as “Falastin”.

The first Arab immigrants that settled in the so-called Palestine – or, according to the modern UN conception, the first “Palestinian refugees” – were actually Jewish Arabs, namely Nabateans that adopted Judaism. Before the rise of Islam, flourishing centres like Khaybar and Yathrib (renamed Madinah) were mainly Jewish Nabatean cities. Whenever there was a famine in the land, people would go to Khaybar; the Jews always had fruit, and their springs yielded a plentiful supply of water. Once the muslim hordes conquered the Arabian peninsula, all that richness was ruined; the muslims perpetrated massacres against the Jews and replaced them with masses of ignorant fellahin submitted to the new religion. The survivors had to escape and took refuge in the Holy Land, mainly in Yericho and Dera’a, on both shores of the Jordan.

The Arab caliphs (Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid) controlled the Holy Land until 1071 c.e., when Jerusalem was captured by the Seldjuq Turks, and after that time, it was never again under Arab rule. During all that period, Arabs hardly established any permanent social structure of their own, but rather governed over the native non-Arab Christian and Jewish population. Any honest observer would notice that the Arabs ruled over the Holy Land three centuries less than they did over Spain!

In 1099 c.e., the European Crusaders conquered the so-called Palestine and established a kingdom that was politically independent, but never developed a national identity; it was just a military outpost of Christian Europe. The Crusaders were ruthless and tried by all means to remove any expression of Jewish culture, but all their efforts ended without success. In 1187 c.e., Jews actively participated with Salah-ud-Din Al’Ayyub (Saladin) against the Crusaders in the conquest of Jerusalem. Saladin, who was the greatest muslim conqueror, was not an Arab but a Kurd. The Crusaders took Jerusalem back from 1229 to 1244 c.e., when the City was captured by the Khwarezmians. A period of chaos and Mongol invasions followed until 1291c.e., when the Mameluks completed the conquest of almost the whole Middle East and settled their capital in Cairo, Egypt. The Mameluks were originally Central Asian and Caucasian mercenaries employed by the Arab caliphs; a medley of peoples whose main contingent was composed by Kumans, a Turkic tribe also known as Kipchak, related to the Seldjuqs, Kimaks and other groups. They were characterized by their ambiguous behaviour, as Kuman mercenaries were often contemporarily serving two enemy armies. The Mameluk soldiers did not miss the right moment to seize power for themselves, and even after their rule was overthrown, they were still employed as warriors by the Ottoman sultans and at last by Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1517 c.e., Jerusalem and the whole Holy Land were conquered by the Ottoman Turks and remained under their rule during four centuries, until 1917 c.e., when the British captured Jerusalem and established the “Mandate of Palestine”. It was the end of the Ottoman Empire, that owned all the present-day Arab countries until then. Indeed, since the fall of the Abbasid caliphate in 945 c.e., no Arab political entity existed in the Middle East for almost a millennium!

By the beginning of the XX century c.e., the population of Judea and Samaria – the improperly called “West Bank” – was less than 100,000 inhabitants, of which the majority were Jews. Gaza had no more than 80,000 “native” inhabitants in 1951, at the end of Israel’s Independence War against the whole Arab world. Gaza was occupied by Arabs: How is it possible that in only 50 years it has increased from 80,000 to more than one million people? Are all those Arabs of Gaza so skilful as to procreate children in a supernatural way? Mass immigration is the ONLY plausible explanation for such a demographic increase. The Arab occupation between 1948 and 1967 was an advantageous opportunity for Arab leaders to promote mass immigration of so-called “Palestinians” (a mishmash of Arab immigrants) into Judea, Samaria and Gaza from every Arab country, mainly Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. In fact, since 1950 until the Six-Day War, under Jordanian rule, more than 250 Arab settlements have been founded in Judea and Samaria. The recent construction of the Arab houses is quite evident by the materials used for building: concrete and cinderblock. The Israeli government admits to have allowed over 240,000 workers to enter Judea and Samaria through the border with Jordan since the Oslo Conference – only to have them stay in those territories as Arab settlers. The actual numbers are probably higher. If hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern migrant workers are flooding into the Judea, Samaria and Gaza, why should Israel be required to provide them jobs? In fact the reverse, by supporting their economy while these people refuse to accept Israeli or Jordanian citizenship, Israel is only attracting more migrant workers. Saudi Arabia in a single year expelled over 1,000,000 stateless migrant workers. Lest anyone think that these are all “Palestinians”, taking account of the definition of “Palestinian” according to the United Nations: all those Arabs that spent TWO YEARS in “Palestine” before 1948, and their descendants – with or without proof or documentation -. This definition was specifically designed to include immigrant Arab settlers (not Jewish settlers!).